[Music]
oh mama all engineers are boys how would
you feel if your four-year-old daughters
said this to you
once upon a time I was working from home
as my daughter was unwell she was
sitting right next to me and I was at a
conference call she could see the
brilliant faces of all of my brilliant
colleagues and then in sheer curiosity
typical of any four-year-old asked me
who those faces were and what they did
as most of us with kids and conference
calls are guilty of doing I put myself
on hold and I started explaining to her
oh that's Kurt he's my manager and he's
a software engineer
that's Erik he sits right next to me and
he's a software engineer
that's Alex we're working on a project
together and he's a software engineer
too as I got to the fourth and fifth she
interrupted me and said oh mama
so all engineers are boys I was stunned
amused and bummed she was noticing
something that I had conditioned myself
to ignore that I was the only woman in
the room well in this case a virtual
room factors women in tech and more
specifically women in engineering are a
bit of a minority and children are very
clever parsers of patterns they see the
world through eyes that are not
preconditioned so where do they get this
conditioning from let's think about the
books the stories that we read to our
children less than 5% of kids books
feature characters of color in lead
roles further the content of books tends
to be based on traditional gendered
professions less than 1% of kids books
are themed on stem or sports adventures
so why is it important that books do
something at all we were all kids once
what were some of your favorite books
for me books like The Alchemist and the
lil prince made me wonder about the
origins of everything they fed my
curiosity that would eventually create a
career in tech for me so then why is it
even important that characters and books
look like us as I think of myself today
sometimes a bit of a hesitant leader
sometimes with a bit of an impostor
syndrome I wonder I wonder if the
characters in my favorite books had
looked like me how that would have
propelled me to be a bold dreamer a
risk-taker a non hesitant leader stories
are not just figments of imagination
there are also mediums of manifestation
I believe by diversifying characters and
voices in children's books we can
empower little readers to envision
themselves as future leaders because
missing characters in books translate to
missing leaders in Bodrum labs and
sports fields and our world needs all of
them as a mother of two a woman in tech
a person of color and a first-generation
immigrant I care very deeply that the
race and color and gender of my children
is not a deterrent to their dreams I
want to bust this bias not just for my
kids but for all kids I want us all to
imagine a world where every child is the
hero of the storybook
what if Alice on her way to wonderland
had a propensity towards mathematical
adventures
what if Goldilocks had beautiful black
hair with tinges of gold when the moon
hit it what if the mother in child and
good night moon weren't actually
biologically related
I love these stories they have beautiful
life lessons but I think we can amplify
these lessons
make them more relatable by putting our
kids into them there are eight different
parts of the brain that get triggered
when children read stories books are
pathways into their neural networks
where the reinforced patterns but also
where the form biases we need to rethink
the books that we read to our children
we also need to reimagine the
storytelling experience for it to stay
relevant in today's digitally evolving
world we can't really go back and change
these stories or can we I will come back
to that
you see Tec is my hood this is what I
studied and this is what I've been
working in for the past 15 years
but sadly women are only about 20 25
percent of the tech workforce what's
more concerning is that less than 5% of
tech founders the original creators of
technological products are women
research tells us that girls start
doubting their intelligence in stem by
the time they're 6 years old not due to
lack of intelligence or ability or
skills but due to social conditioning
why is this the case could it start with
something as simple as the stories we
are choosing for our girls and our
daughters and so I took up a passion
project
at my workplace Google with the intent
to use technology to reimagine books to
create inclusive stories at scale in
order to real 'evil inspiration for kids
and as a first step was born the book
ara
the star engineer a story of smarts and
grit where a young girl of color ara
wants to solve a big problem of counting
all the stars in the sky but is not sure
how along the way she meets superheroes
characters based on real-life women
engineers of diverse backgrounds who
teach her computing concepts in the end
ara and her sidekick droid didi discover
a cool algorithm to solve any big
problem an algorithm comprised of
courage creativity coding and
collaboration my colleagues and I then
went on to create various other
modalities for the storytelling
experience to stay relevant and
relatable and inspiring and magical we
made the book traveled beyond paper to a
world of virtual reality and 3d we saw
kids gawk at the enormousness of a data
center and the tiny nosov a processor
chip experiencing stories in VR can
sometimes create a level of awe and
learning which isn't always attainable
in 2d we created a voice assistant
enabled story time so as parents and
children read books together words in
the narrative triggers sound effects and
light effects really bringing the story
to life this allowed kids to make very
unique sensory associations such as
debugging software is something that
produces typing sounds it has nothing to
do with squashing bugs or bees remember
when I spoke about being able to rewrite
our classics or recode our classics we
are now experimenting with artificial
intelligence AI to render protagonists
in books the heroes in books to look
like the reader reading the book so that
the hero of the book does not default to
white or brown or black but to the child
reading the book
we used a I to make ARRA look like that
little girl who happens to have leukemia
but has probably never seen herself in a
book before or that girl for whom her
green hair is a very strong part of her
identity or that girl who's proud to
wear her hijab or that girl who wants to
own her mixed indigenous roots more
deeply technology is a tool that can be
used to reimagine our classics rather
than replace them we can use tech to
give children the power to visualize
themselves as the hero of the story and
of real life the stories we read as kids
correlate with the reality we manifest
as adults I grew up in India in the 80s
sitting under mango trees and reading
science fiction listening to Bollywood
songs and solving physics equations
while studying computer science
I would visualize the internals of a
computer as Alice in Wonderland racing
with processor chips and reasoning with
circuit boards
I was also that kid who worshipped Dana
Scully
from x-files and mr. Spock from Star
Trek there is even a phenomena dubbed as
the Scully effect a research that showed
more than 70% of the girls who grew up
watching Scully landed careers in stem
I'm a live outcome of the Scully effect
heck even my master's thesis was based
on computational criminology how
desperate was I to be like Spock and
Scully similar to the Scully effect I
have now seen a glimmer of the ära
effect in action around the world since
the book launched a year ago it is being
translated in 10 plus languages and
countries around
the world this is a story from a young
girl of Hispanic background who lives in
the Bronx she was so inspired by the
book she wrote her own book called
Isabella the space engineer and wants to
be one this is GN from Beijing who when
asked to draw what an engineer looks
like drew a picture of her own self here
are two girls one from Canada and one
from Australia who both dressed up as
their favorite character ara the
engineer ready to solve problems here's
a girls robotics team in Portugal that
actually built encoded a real robot and
named it D D based on the robot in the
book so many children from around the
world who sent us stories here's one
from a girl who wants to create nanobots
that enter human brain to cure diseases
and also flying nanobots that go into
alien lands that bring back cures for
diseases my daughter and I were at the
Shanghai Book Fair for the launch of the
book in China and a journalist here
asked her what do you want to be when
you grow up oh I want to be an author
and an engineer was her instant reply
this is the power of inclusive
characters in books
if one book could do so much what if we
had ten a hundred or all of our classics
what could inclusive stories at scale
achieve so in order to solve big
problems for the world let's not
overlook the importance of something
very simple and pure story books if you
are one of those creative techie types
why not create new ways and mediums to
make stories inclusive at scale if you
are trying to solve the diversity
problem in the workplace
why not
more of such initiatives that bring
inclusive storytelling into the lives of
kids very early on when they're six
years old not 26 or 16 and if you are a
book lover why not choose to read those
books to our kids that can empower them
to be the hero at whatever they choose
so that all of our daughters and girls
can see and believe that engineers are
just people thank you
[Applause]