Will AI Help Break Gender Barriers—or Build Bigger Ones? | Pendo Manjele | TEDxLusaka
Pendo Manjele shares her lived experience as a woman in tech, confronting the gap between promises of inclusion and everyday realities.She explores how AI, trained on biased data, built by non-diverse teams, and deployed without accountability, is already shaping critical life decisions in hiring, credit, and healthcare. If left unchecked, it risks reinforcing the very inequalities we aim to dismantle. This TEDx Talk is a call to action: for women to lead, for men to become allies, and for leaders to design inclusive systems. The future won’t be fair by default. It must be fair by design. Pendo Manjele is a co-founder of Ubuntu AI, a grassroots initiative that aims to advance machine learning in Zambia and make AI more accessible to broader communities. She is driven to promote gender diversity and inclusion in the tech industry. Pendo believes in the power of community and is committed to creating spaces where innovation, equity, and opportunity thrive. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx
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