Dei

During a Zoom meeting with her senior leaders last summer, Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet sat at a table, an open notebook in front of her, a laptop to her side, her arms crossed. An attendee had just asked her about the progress of the organization’s $80 million Advancing Cities Fund, which was raised through J.P. Morgan’s Private Bank Platform. In the calm demeanor of someone trying to watch her words, she answered that Advancing Cities was not going well. Multiple incidents across multiple programs had caused J.P.…

Derek Smith, the founder of Plug In South LA, grew up in southern Los Angeles and saw first-hand the frustration that stems from lack of economic development. That’s why he decided to come home in 2015, after spending the first part of his career in NYC, to start a startup incubator in his old neighborhood. He wanted to help aspiring entrepreneurs learn the ropes of growing a startup, and hoped that in the process, building these businesses could help bring higher-paying jobs to the area. Smith already knew that…

To give AI-focused women academics and others their well-deserved — and overdue — time in the spotlight, TechCrunch is launching a series of interviews focusing on remarkable women who’ve contributed to the AI revolution. We’ll publish several pieces throughout the year as the AI boom continues, highlighting key work that often goes unrecognized. Read more profiles here. Karine Perset works for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), where she runs its AI Unit and oversees the OECD.AI…

Venture capital funding has never been robust for women or Black and brown founders. Alongside Crunchbase, we’ve been tracking funding levels to pinpoint moments of progress and regression for marginalized entrepreneurs. For example, Black founders saw record amounts of funding in the bull year that was 2021, but that amount dipped substantially as the market cooled and as many DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) measures retreated. Women, on the other hand, have seen consistent funding for the past few years —…

To give AI-focused women academics and others their well-deserved — and overdue — time in the spotlight, TechCrunch is launching a series of interviews focusing on remarkable women who’ve contributed to the AI revolution. We’ll publish several pieces throughout the year as the AI boom continues, highlighting key work that often goes unrecognized. Read more profiles here. Amba Kak is the executive director of the AI Now Institute, where she helps create policy recommendations to address AI concerns. She was also a…

Google has apologized (or come very close to apologizing) for another embarrassing AI blunder this week, an image-generating model that injected diversity into pictures with a farcical disregard for historical context. While the underlying issue is perfectly understandable, Google blames the model for “becoming” oversensitive. But the model didn’t make itself, guys. The AI system in question is Gemini, the company’s flagship conversational AI platform, which when asked calls out to a version of the Imagen 2 model to…

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain According to new research from Rice University and the University of Nebraska at Omaha, conservative-leaning job applicants indicate being less likely to pursue positions that require personal statements on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), and those negative reactions are not independent of anti-Black racism. …

The Great Rollback is here. The phrase refers to Big Tech starting to slash some of the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs that were implemented shortly after the murder of George Floyd. Most recently, Zoom announced that it laid off its DEI team. Google and Meta have started to defund their DEI programs, and funding to Black founders continues to dip. Lawsuits have been filed targeting DEI programs, forcing companies to now hide their inclusion efforts while billionaires are arguing on X about whether…

Now that the 2024 Oscar nominations have been announced, and the voting window for eventual winners is around the corner, awards season has kicked into high gear. Moviegoers had a lot of thoughts, feelings, opinions, and reactions to this year’s nominations, including how Greta Gerwig wasn’t nominated in the Best Director category despite Barbie being a bona fide cultural phenomenon, the highest-grossing movie of the year ($1.4 billion worldwide), and receiving eight other nominations, including Best Picture. Now,…

U.S. officials are struggling to explain how three Army reservists were killed by a drone strike at a military base in Jordan. Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo thinks she’s found the answer: diversity initiatives.  Bartiromo suggested to Rep. August Pfluger (R-Texas) on Tuesday that the attack may have been caused by DEI, a shorthand for “diversity, equity, and inclusion ”and the latest right-wing anti-diversity boogeyman.  “Maybe focused too much on DEI,” Bartiromo said. “There’s a concern at the FBI…