Cannes Round-Up: Jessica Allan: So, Why Didn't The World's Smartest Computer Have A Woman's Name?

M-A-C-H-I-N-E-Y-E-S-T-I-X-E.

It's Machine Learning from Assist. It's a podcast where we think and dream about the future of AI, the talking internet, and how we're reshaping our culture. This chapter is an excerpt from episode 4, A wrap-up of our interviews at the 2018 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. It's where over 10,000 folks from 90 countries meet to hand out awards and chop up the future of brand communication. We used the opportunity to do almost all of our interviews on a boat. But it wasn't just any boat. It was the floating home of LivePerson, one of the true leaders in transforming customer care from voice calls to mobile messaging at scale. They're a huge deal in the conversational commerce world. LivePerson took great care of us and are a true friend of the pod. Up next, we have video producer Jessica Allen from Fancy Films in Australia. Her current documentary project has her looking into ways men and women evaluate and reward female leaders differently. Leadership is a critical topic for tech, and this conversation puts some new ideas on the table. Enjoy.

What are you up to?

A web series, and it's called From A to Me, and it's profiling a range of prominent Australian female leaders in relation to inspiring women and, and our next generation of women coming up who will be obviously our next range of female leaders. And so we're here at Cannes, it's our third year, and we've been using the opportunity to absorb the content around this subject because it is a very prominent subject this year, and it was last year as well, but but also collect some supporting content for ourselves for our big launch. So, we've been interviewing a lot of people and asking them, you know, what it means to them, what makes a good female leader, what makes an impressive female leader, and who are their female role models. So, it's been quite interesting, the range of responses we've been getting really.

And what did they say? What is the answer to what makes a great female leader?

Resilience, strength, We've noticed there is actually quite a difference between the females that we ask versus the males that we ask, what their responses are. So, you know, when we're asking the women and even younger girls, what do you see as a good female leader, that, you know, strength and resilience and being bold and, you know, all those really great qualities that I really aspire to be. And, you know, men are saying the same thing, but then they also bring in other aspects like grace and gentleness and those kinds of qualities, which I like, you know, whilst I see them as important as well, it's interesting that no female has listed those.

Fascinating.

Yeah. So yeah, we need to be strong and, you know, have grit and that kind of thing. But there's also this expectation that we have to do it lightly and with grace and beauty.

What's the genesis story of this? When did this start?

So this started a year ago when I was here with my boss, our creative director, and she is probably one of my role models, and I feel very lucky to have worked with her for the last 7 years. And it was sparked by her. This is all— this is her baby. And it started when we saw a session last year, a panel of women, Gillian Armstrong being one of them, one of Australia's leading female film directors. And she made a comment where she said that she gave some stats and some quotas and she said, "Only 9% of directors are female." And that really struck a chord with my boss. And she thought that was appalling as a female director herself. And she wanted to do something about it. And do what she could using the vehicle that she has with a film production company to spark change and have a response to these terrible figures. And so then came Me Too not long after that. And in the response to that, there was an article on LinkedIn that she came across from a prominent Australian female journalist, Tracey Spicer. And she spoke about launching this campaign called 100 Days Place for Change in Australia. And that campaign is asking businesses and individuals to do what they can in whatever capacity they can to help create a more equitable workplace and help close that gender gap. And so as part of that, my boss Karen Nossel, she, um, decided to create this series. And, um, yeah, it sort of started from there and snowballed from there. We actually got Tracey Spicer on board, and so we've already interviewed her, and we're going to be launching a video a week for the 100 days. And then, you know, who knows what'll happen?

What I think is amazing about this initiative you're going after at Cannes is even our podcast is called Machine Yearning. And it's that, you know, in this era of AI and machine learning, no one really knows what's going to happen. But we need to be intentional about the decisions we make for this next phase of the internet. And it makes me think of yesterday we interviewed on the boat a guy named Rob Locascio, and he just started an initiative called Equal AI. And Equal AI is because he saw people naming even Alexa as a woman, and it speaks like a woman.

Yeah.

And then you tell it what to do and turn on the lights and do all these chores, all the menial tasks. Exactly. And then Watson is a man, and IBM's like, this is the smartest AI and this is the real— and I think it's a bigger thing. Like, I think these two things going in parallel are very actually important and probably There's a reason they're both landing here at the same time, because if we don't perceive women in leadership differently or get way more in leadership, like, we also have to change what we're doing with this new wave of machines and AI and talking to, uh, bots and voice agents and all this stuff. And you shouldn't name it a fucking woman, like, at all.

I agree, and I've, I've never actually thought of that before.

What do you hope to see out of this? How do you know that you are making an impact?

So we work with a lot of big corporate companies in Australia, and we would love for this to inspire them to get on board with this platform and, you know, start profiling some of their strong female leaders within their organizations to really foster, you know, a culture that embraces females and encourages them into positions of power. Because, you know, that can be hard in a lot of the industries we work within are heavily heavily male-dominated industries. And so as a female, young or old, working within that, you know, you're often expected to almost become a man or exhibit, you know, masculine qualities. And so it's about really supporting, supporting each other as females and also, you know, what the, what the men can do as well, because it's, it needs both sides to work towards this.

—What can we do?

—I think really just looking at women. So, you know, simple as when there's job openings, making sure that you've got women in the mix of these positions that are, you know, up for grabs and that kind of thing. Making sure you're creating environments where they feel safe to voice, you know, their ideas and where they feel like they're heard and they're not shut down and not sort of just put to the side. I heard an interesting quote in a session yesterday where they said, "It's not actually enough to have one female on a board or at a table because as one female, she can only speak for females. Whereas if there's more than one female, she can actually speak to her creative ideas, her own personal ideas 'cause she's not having to speak on behalf of all women." I thought that, I'd never thought of that. I thought that was a really interesting observation.

That's great. It's almost like once we gave opportunity or allowed women to do things that they couldn't in the past, we're still clouded by what it was like before that, even though we want you to have as much access and opportunity. And we're still like clouded. So how do we change our— how do you change your perceptions?

It can be difficult for men to see it because they haven't necessarily experienced it. A big piece of it comes down to educating the boys. Yeah. The young men who are coming up and educating them about, you know, these aspects of equality and that girls, you know, that they're interacting with are just as important and teaching them that it's not okay to do certain things. And 'cause a lot of it's like, you know, boys will be boys and all that kind of thing. Like whilst it may seem innocent, it's really sending, you know, not a great message. And part of that is showing that those feminine qualities aren't negative. So it's also giving boys and men the freedom and space to exhibit traditionally feminine qualities. And that's where the whole concept of, you know, toxic masculinity comes in. So not seeing softness and, you know, those kinds of things as, negative traits. Like, there's no sort of negative characteristics. It's just that we give them negative—

yeah, you know, like, and once you get there, you realize it's really just giving yourself empathy. Exactly. And more empathy. Yeah, yeah. Um, so I agree with you, the children feels like the most important place to start, and then that you women are more, more sometimes, and the same, capable as, as the boys.

Yeah, it's just that often we're not given the opportunity to show that. I really think it's in the creating opportunities, drawing your attention to it so that you're intentionally including women.

I think that's a very interesting point to end on, which is whether you're in a professional setting, a work setting, a filmmaking setting, any setting, to never go, hey, is this the greatest work yet? Or is this what we should do? And say, the question is more Did we ask the right questions about inclusion? And if not, then change it.

And I believe that that's all levels of diversity. Yeah. Like diversity of opinion and background and race and gender, it all sort of feeds into a better outcome. And the statistics show that a more diverse workplace produces better results. Financially. Thank you very much. Thank you.

All right, thanks for listening, and thanks once again to the folks at LivePerson for their support in making the Machine Learning CAN episodes possible. We loved discovering Jessica at CAN because machine learning is all about the ways we navigate a new world where identity and technology and commerce and culture have to live together in ways we can't even fully imagine yet. Get in touch on Twitter @Assist. DMs are open. We're super interested to hear who you think should appear on the podcast. Machine Learning is made by Paul Chufo and Michael Alsesser for Limina House. Have a great day.