My name is not a spelling mistake

A skills assessment from ACS (Australian Computer Society) was the first step I took when I got invited to apply for my Australian PR many years ago. Recently, I got the opportunity to share my story with the very same organisation.

I was invited to be the keynote speaker for ACS Victoria’s Connect and Reflect: Diversity edition event to discuss something I am very passionate about: representation and inclusion in tech. 

I chose the topic “My name is not a spelling mistake” to highlight how most non-anglicised names are auto-corrected or underlined even now as a spelling mistake. My name always auto-corrects to “Video”. While most people ignore it, to me, it reveals the deeper biases embedded in the systems we create.

Our journey with biases starts from the day we are born. Mine started with being born in India in a family with more females and something they were proud of, but I often heard people ask my parents if they would have wanted a male child. Growing up in different parts of India, I could see how people easily made assumptions based on where you come from or how you look. I naively assumed that moving out of India would change this, but that is when I got labeled with the most loaded term – immigrant.

Both an ‘immigrant’ and an ‘expat’ are people moving from their home country to a host country. They are expected to abide by the host country laws, be good residents, pay taxes etc. But immigrant is such a loaded term with a negative connotation of someone who takes from society, while an expat is seen as someone who contributes to society. These are terms used interchangeably and selectively to certain sects of society, even when the person has no intentions of permanently immigrating to the host country.

We see bias patterns repeat in the terms that we use without thought, like “female” leaders/CEO, but just leaders/CEOs when it is a male. Or Indian/Asian/African American, but not Caucasian Americans. These are just examples, and it gets more hurtful when we get into gender, disabilities, religion, neurodivergence etc.

This is a very nuanced, messy, and complex topic that has no single solution. And now we have taken all of that and fed it to AI systems to learn, repeat and multiply these biases and let them seep into all aspects of our lives. AI and technology are currently reinforcing bias bubbles and amplifying the existing disparity. The scary aspect of this is that when a human displays unfair behaviour, we are comfortable calling it out, but these same decisions are taken at face value when spit out by machines, as we assume they are unbiased. What people miss is that these systems have learnt from prior human data.

Without our knowledge, we have these machines making decisions for us from where we can study (scholarships and admissions to universities), where we live (loan interest rates and amounts), how we get medical treatment (most studies are done on the male body), our safety (law enforcement and judicial decisions), where we work (resumes being picked) etc.

This isn’t a technology problem; it is a deeply human one.

So, what can we do as leaders and professionals?

• It starts with acknowledging the biases in us, in the data, and in the algorithms
• Asking the questions: “Who benefits from this?” and “Who is being left out?”
• Feeling empowered to ask for representation
• And most importantly, being an ally to ensure all voices are included as we build new systems.

I am grateful to everyone who is willing to be part of such an important conversation. And I hope you find courage in sharing it more broadly and questioning conscious and unconscious biases. Your stories and your voice matter.

Let us make inclusion a default setting in tech, not an upgrade.