Reflections on ‘Generative AI: a problematic illustration of the intersections of racialized gender, race, ethnicity’
When I first wrote the blog post of the same title in summer 2023, I didn’t realize the influence that it might have on other educators.
The blog led to a collaboration with a colleague called Nayiri, which saw us create a workshop and openly accessible materials that aim to uncover how generative AI tools such as DALL-E and many others are underpinned by racist algorithms. What these human-coded tools create reflects historically racist views by (re)producing these through, for example, images created through seemingly innocent prompts.
Since then, we have given and been invited to host the workshop to students and staff at places such as Surrey University, Glasgow University, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University and other organizations.
Now, as of July 2025, both Nayiri and I have been invited to give the presentations and the workshop at various events (both alone and together), and here is a list below:
September 2023: A talk for EmpowerED Webinar Series 9.
March 2024: A presentation for Research Integrity in an AI‑Enabled World Deep‑Dive Workshop, University College London.
May 2024: A workshop for Supporting Racial and Social Justice in Higher Education event at the University of Exeter.
May 2024: #Take5 #105 – Unveiling “Generative AI: a problematic illustration of the intersections of racialized
gender, race and ethnicity”’. Blog. Association for Learning Development in Higher Education.
Summer 2024: LearnHigher Resource of the Year Award, Association for Learning Development in Higher Education
March 2025: A presentation for the Teens in AI IWD2025 Bootcamp Week.
June 2025: A workshop co-organized with and for CoLIS 2025: 12th International Conference on Conceptions of Library and Information Science.
July 2025: A workshop for Cambridge University Press & Assessment
I suspect this is a growing list that reflects just how interested people are in the issues and the importance that we all feel about this topic in question.
This continuing collaboration and development wouldn’t have happened without all of the input we had from people, especially Black women, who work in and alongside higher education.
