Introduction: The Human Impact Side of AI

Today I want to talk about more on the impact side of AI, the human side of AI, which I think is also very important. And I'll be diving a little bit deeper into female and neurodivergent voices and why they're absolutely essential for building AI.

And I saw already a few guys have been raising their hands, so we have a lot of active engineers that are engineering AI, which which is great.

About the Speaker: Lisa Gerrits and Neurominds

And just maybe quickly about myself. So I'm Lisa Gerrits. I'm the founder of Neurominds.

Neurominds is the world's first holistic ecosystem for neurodivergence to get immediate access to support. I'll dive a little bit in later in case you have neurodivergence in your environment or are neurodivergent yourself.

I have no former university degree, but I have made a career of 17 years in people and culture in complex and international environments and I was assessed with ADHD, autism, hypersensitivity and dyspraxia

around six years ago and I saw this as an opportunity to create something that is serving the community to actually mitigate the struggles that I had in my childhood and also from a workplace perspective.

You see a few emojis here this is basically me, my character, I'm a nerd by nature, I'm into boating, I love deep conversations science geopolitics i am absolutely fascinated about the brain of humans i do improv theater and i am as well into sports and into nutrition that's a little bit about me

The Diversity Gap in AI—and Why It Matters

the problem that we have is that ai is built by a very homogeneous group i think this should not be a surprise. 90 % of AI engineers are male, also not a surprise and less than 20 % of women

are actually showing up on the research papers where they have been co -authored as females, which is a little bit of a problem because the result is that we have biased algorithms, we have missed opportunities and definitely we have a lot of products that are not serving everyone.

Better Decisions, Better Products, Fewer Biases

So I will also quickly dive in later that it's really important as a company to know your audience why diversity in ai matters first of all diverse teams are taking by 87 better decisions because they are bringing in very different viewpoints which is very important in

business moving forward and ai reflects its creators this is also for the majority of you here not a surprise so basically if the teams are lacking diversity the ai will reflect it as well

and I have one example for you 34 % of women of color claiming that the facial recognition doesn't work for them and that's not cool and this is something we

Neurodivergence as a Cognitive Asset in AI

have to change neurodivergence as a cognitive asset for AI I want to mention that neurodivergence are excelling in pattern recognition they solve problems in a very very creative way they can hyper focus on extreme complexity and they have critical thinking by nature.

The 30 % you see here is that neurodivergent teams are solving problems 30 % faster, but also neurodivergent teams are actually 30 % more productive. So

when we look at neurodivergent in brackets women, I also want to highlight that most neurodivergents are the most effective users of AI. There are new studies and data that has been released

highly ethical they have also very high integrity which is important also when we take regulations and laws and legislations into consideration they create better a return of investments for companies that's also meanwhile

proven and neurodivergence they're taking all diversity factors into consideration which means that they're not thinking for their own group but they are thinking of absolutely everyone due to the critical thinking on the the complex thinking, and actually creating products that benefit everyone.

Why Female Leadership and Representation Matter

And why female leadership is so extremely important in AI is women are representing 50 % of the global population. I think everyone knows that.

But again, as I mentioned earlier, 90 % of men are actually developing AI, where we have a slight mismatch. And also like the products that we are creating

should reflect the experience and also the needs of women as well then we should also encourage women to be more in AI and as a people in culture specialist I know that it is very very complicated and complex to find females

that are actually willing to learn tech and to learn AI but at the same time we have to make more efforts here as a collective because it will also double the talent pool long term and I think we are at a time where we can also not turn

a blind eye on ai anymore it won't vanish and female at ai can definitely better address things like social equity like health care and education which is so incredibly important because we also see that at the moment our systems are starting to crackle so they don't really work anymore and i think that female ai can can also make a great difference here and inclusive ai industries are

are actually unlocking new markets. So not only talking about females or neurodivergence, but diversity in general is unlocking new markets and creating entire new economic opportunities.

The “AI Backfire”: Speed, Recklessness, and Societal Fear

Since two years, I'm talking about the AI backfire because I see patterns, I see the history, I see how tech is developing, I see how we develop as a society from a social anthropology perspective. perspective.

So I think and I have also seen that AI is moving very fast and partially very reckless.

We can see it all over the news, the headlines, what is happening, that some sort of AI is blackmailing their teams, et cetera. And this is something where we need to be very cautious of.

From a societal point of view, what I want to highlight here is that 62 percent of employees are scared. They are in fear that their jobs are being

taken by AI so now we live in a capitalistic system right if we think of the scenario that white -collar people will lose their jobs it means that there will be no money to actually consume and as we're living in capitalism we have to consume right so the system wouldn't work anymore and I think that fear is

something I really really want to highlight we have to kind of like take

Job Displacement Anxiety and Trend-Driven Adoption

that away from people because ai should support you not replace you and companies invested already billions in ai i'll share some numbers later but without clear use cases you have a lot of

companies and ceos and executives they're seemingly walking around like headless chickens and just wanting to implement ai but without any use cases without any actual problem to solve and without any any potent like impact they want to create by implementing ai they're chasing trends and the result is that we have a lot of fear as i mentioned already and a lot of wasted resources

Planetary Costs and the Investment Reality Check

also from a planetary perspective because we also know nowadays that if we're using ai it costs a lot of electricity and a lot of water so we have to be very mindful on how we're using ai and asking ourselves in what way and to what extent the economic reality is not

that the air bubble is bursting but as you can see 200 billions of dollars have been invested between 2023 and 2026 into AI companies thought that there will be a huge return on investment however many companies are scaling back due to the lack of monetization so the expectation and the reality is different and now they're scaling back

which is a little bit sad because 200 billions could have been invested in better healthcare systems in better school systems support and i think the opportunity that we do have now is

Building AI Responsibly: Strategy Before Scaling

it's time to build it with responsibility which requires all of us because ai without a plan is absolute chaos as I mentioned earlier companies rushing it wanting to implement AI but not having any clear use cases and I'm talking about this

since two years but now Gardner was finally releasing some data in 2026 that almost 80 % of companies are actually admitting that they don't have a clear use case and they don't have an AI strategy so what are they going to do do? What are they doing? This is what I have been asking myself since two years and we

have a lot of mass layoffs right now, we see it happening everywhere and at the same time yeah it's a trend that has not delivered the return on investment. 1So the lesson is that 1AI should solve problems and not just chase the trends.

The Solution: Inclusive AI Development

So the solution is the inclusive

AI development it is very important to hire as diverse as possible if you have teams that are developing AI and you see that there is ten dudes great but where are the women where the people of color with LGBTQ plus where are all these

people and I know that we had this Trump effect that has been implemented all over the place the diversity equity inclusion and belonging has been cut largely in companies which I think is absolutely not gonna happen in the long

run because know your audience know your clients know the customers know the people who are consuming your products and co -create with the users ensure that

it serves all of society because what I did with Neurominds for example is I have been asking the community I've been asking them what is it that you need what is it that we can make obsolete what is it that you would like to see on that platform so we are actually getting feedback from the people that actually

benefit from the product and last but not least I think this is the most

important one slow down and think critically because what we have at the moment is we are so bombarded with data and information it's a lot it's really a lot to take in and I absolutely understand that so many people are overwhelmed including myself with all the data that's being bombarded at us

but no great decision has ever been taken in a rush and no great product has ever been created just in a snap you really need to think about it and allowing yourself to slow down and think critically before you are actually taking a decision and implement something is a great

Case Studies: Examples of Inclusion Done Right

game changer two case studies i wanted to share which have been done right so we have ibm and And they have been actually increasing females in AI, which is amazing. So basically, they have been reducing the bias by implementing some mitigation architecture, basically. So females have better hiring processes and also promotion processes. Well done, IBM.

EY has been actually using neurodivergent teams, using Copilot, which is one AI tool, to generate between 60 and 80 tangible ideas put into action, where they have been improving processes, where they have also been fostering greater innovation and increasing efficiency. And this is what we have to see more.

Call to Action: What Everyone Can Do

The call to action and what everyone can do doesn't matter if you are a solopreneur, an entrepreneur, company owner, executive, CEO or employee.

Advocate for diverse hiring in AI and especially for engineering teams. Make sure that you are challenging the composition of the teams because it is important that we have the diversity going.

The second is 1demand ethical and transparent AI development. Now, how do we do this? We can actually ask questions within the companies we're working in. We can ask ourselves the question.

I think that's really important to demand ethical and transparent AI development, so we know exactly what's the purpose behind, what is it that we're going to achieve as a company by implementing it.

thirdly support diverse professionals in tech so if they're already diverse professionals in tech make sure that you are supporting them that you are helping them in a way because they might also attract other diverse team members which will be great a great ripple effect and last but not least

i mentioned it already slightly question the ai implementations that don't have a purpose and I have seen not joking I have seen CEOs in Switzerland threatening in town halls their entire teams that they are going to lose their jobs because of AI which is fear -based culture which I'm absolutely not a fan of but at the same time everyone is just afraid to ask the questions

and I think that in our society we need to have a little bit more courage and not be afraid to ask uncomfortable questions especially when we are talking about a purpose that's

Neurominds: A Holistic Ecosystem for Neurodivergence

not clear to us quickly about neurominds if you have someone a loved one or if

you are neurodivergent yourself we have three pillars which is connect learn and grow so we have a community that is entirely for free we have curated hubs as you can see here so not nothing randomized here basically peers can can support each other, which is really important.

We're supporting agency advocacy and also participate actively in research and development that is still pretty scarce in neurodivergence.

The second thing is we have at the moment some blog posts from the actual research, not from the 80s or 90s because there are still so many misconceptions and neurodivergence are feeling so misunderstood.

We have created a very comprehensive agent, talking about AI, that is actually bridging the different disciplines like epigenetics, neuroscience, psychology, social anthropology, because at the moment the research is still pretty siloed.

So we actually try and combine all of the disciplines together to get a more holistic understanding because the human brain is very, very complex, as well the neurodivergent

brain so we actually implement our subscription soon and grow we have mind mentors that can actually immediately support neurodivergence because in some research we figured out that 90 % of traditional psychotherapy doesn't help neurodivergence and mentoring is just an entire

different approach 180 degrees different meaning that you learn the tools that you can actually implement tomorrow in your daily life and this is a little bit of the look and

feel our team our little chief wellness officer this is how the mask looks like and this is Chile our newer spicy support and in case someone has like

Conclusion: Shaping AI Together

pressing issues he's here to ask and the future is in our hands in all of our hands and AI is not a destiny but we are as a collective society so I really hope that we we can all jump in to build it together and challenge the status quo

and PS be kind to AI don't be cocky or snooty to AI be kind because AI is reflecting as well our society our behaviors and how we are so yeah I would

love you to stay connected with me follow us on the different social media channels that we have i would really love to have discussions if you have any questions now it's your time thank you