Male and female

It’s also important that male and female points of view are taken into consideration if we’re to ensure that any biases, conscious or unconscious, are not translated into the development of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.

With this in mind, we need to take care that we do not unintentionally recreate damaging stereotypes of humans in intelligent robotics, machines and algorithms and this step provides some food for thought on male vs female intelligence.

Women in science – a historical perspective

As Angela Saini points out in her 2017 book, Inferior, female scientists have often been treated as outsiders (Saini 2017: 10). For example, the two-time Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie was prevented from joining France’s Academy of Sciences in 1911 on the basis of her gender. Furthermore, in 1881 in a reply to a question from Mrs Caroline Kennard of Brookline Massachusetts as to whether women were naturally inferior to men, the famous scientist replied:

The question to which you refer is a very difficult one. […] I certainly think that women, though generally superior to men [in] moral qualities, are inferior intellectually.

(Saini 2017: 18)

Differences between male and female brains

Your task

Read Gurr et al.’s 1999 open-access paper on Sex Differences in Brain Grey and White Matter in Healthy Young Adults: Correlations With Cognitive Performance

On the basis of what you’ve read in the article and what you’ve learned, what do you think of the view that intelligence has its origins in genetics?

Further reading

_{Bourke, J. (2011). What it Means to be Human: Reflections from 1791 to the Present. Virago Press}

_{Ingalhalikar, M., Smith, A., Parker, D., Satterthwaite, T.D., Elliott, M.A, Ruparel, K., Hakonarson, H., Gur, R.E., Gur, R.C, and Verma, R. Sex Differences in the Structural Connectome of the Human Brain. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111(2) 823-828}

References

_{Baitz, E. (2015). Sexism in Science: One Step Back, Two Steps Forward. The Conversation https://theconversation.com/sexism-in-science-one-step-back-two-steps-forward-41229}

_{Gurr, R.,C., Turetsky, B.,I., Matsui, M., Yan, M., Bilker, W., Hughett, P. and Gurr R. (1999). Sex Differences in Brain Grey and White Matter in Healthy Young Adults: Correlations with Cognitive Performance. Journal of Neuroscience, 19(10)https://www.jneurosci.org/content/19/10/4065}

_{Ingalhalikar, M., Smith, A., Parker, D., Satterthwaite, T.D., Elliot, M.A., Ruparel, K., Hakonarson, H., Gur, R.A., Gur, R.C. and Verma, R. (2014). Sex Differences in the Structural Connectome of the Human Brain. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, 111(2) 823–828. https://www.pnas.org/content/111/2/823.full}

_{Saini, A. (2017). Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong – and the New Research that’s Rewriting the Story. Harper Collins}