The DEI4 Embodied AI Project won the NWO Diversity Initiative Award 2022
The NWO Diversity & Inclusion Initiative Award is for initiatives that increase diversity within the field. A winner is selected each year and this year's Diversity & Inclusion Initiative Award went to the DEI4 Embodied AI initiative; a project funded by the 4TU.NIRICT DEI fund. The prize consists of a statue and 50K.
DEI4 Embodied AI project and Team:
The DEI4 Embodied AI initiative focused on broadening participation in the development of AI in computer science (i.e., who makes decisions about what to develop, how to develop, who takes a particular perspective, and which values to embed) and on changing current practices in an open societal conversation.
The project team consists of a research collective coming from various disciplines, cultures, and gender identities working in the development, evaluation, and policy geared towards more diverse and inclusive embodied AI. They believe inequity starts in the ideation process and continues at all levels of the development and deployment. They applied for the 4TU.NIRICT DEI Fund to work on an initiative alongside their research duties called DEI4 Embodied AI. The initiative focuses on broadening participation in embodied AI, critique, raising awareness about common issues related to gender, race, and ableism in Embodied AI, and providing tangible resources for practicing diversity, equity, and inclusion when developing embodied AI.
With a relatively small grant, they realized four workshops and produced open access resources readily available for the academic and societal community in embodied AI. The workshops reached more than 200 participants from the four technical universities and beyond, and they included international guests that helped them attract attention to the matter. They produced an open-access booklet, a syllabus, and a series of videos available to the national and international community.
For more information about the DEI4EAI project and the team behind it please take a look their website and the video:
