On the occasion of LUDOVIA#BE, which took place in Spa, Wallonia from October 22 to 24, 2024, we met a number of inspiring individuals. Over the coming weeks, we’ll be sharing a selection of them through articles and short videos that we hope will spark ideas for your current and future projects.
Interview 🎙️Today, we hope to inspire you with Alyssia Ricci, an educational technologist.
She talks to us about a project she led with eight youth centers to deconstruct a number of stereotypes commonly found in the media.
“We carried out a media literacy project with eight youth centers in Belgium, in which we deconstructed gender stereotypes, diversity issues, racism, beauty standards, and sexism as seen in the media,” explains Alyssia.
The media chosen were those most used by young people—namely, social networks.
“And indirectly, within social networks, there’s a lot of AI. That’s why we asked ourselves the following question: does AI also carry biases?” she adds.
As they dug deeper with the youth, they quickly realized that AI indeed contains many biases—especially racial ones.
“Trying to generate an image of a Black doctor treating a white child? That’s practically impossible with ChatGPT,” she says with irony.
In light of these findings, she describes the young participants’ reactions as surprised by the AI’s responses. This kind of work opens their eyes:
“They’re not aware of all this, and they feel particularly affected when the topic relates to them,” she explains.
They learn that to get a precise output from ChatGPT, they need to use a precise prompt.
“At first, young people use prompts like a search engine—short phrases, keywords—and that’s where biases are most evident. But even with detailed prompts, it’s hard to avoid censorship. For example, it’s really difficult to generate a fashion show featuring plus-sized white women… AI still has its limits,” she points out.
How can we get around all this, and stop being victims of the algorithms?
That’s exactly what Alyssia is working on in her media education workshops with young people: raising awareness so they don’t get manipulated.
“If we want to break out of the system—AI, for example—we need to prompt more precisely and also look for other sources, use articles, etc.”
But let’s be realistic—we don’t have much power against the GAFAM giants!
Still, if we can at least raise young people’s awareness so that they become more cautious and skeptical when using social media, that’s already a small victory.
Find all the resources on AI and its biases, available for free (ages 13+), here:
👉 www.diversityx.be
Image credits: screenshots from www.diversityx.be
