Narrativa launches a model for detecting gender stereotypes in language

Even as society advances more and more, gender stereotypes continue to plague our daily lives. Fortunately, artificial intelligence can be used as a force for good to help us detect these biases, as Narrativa has created a new model for detecting stereotypes in language.

Natural Language Processing

At Narrativa we often talk about Natural Language Processing (or NLP). But what exactly is it? It’s the way in which artificial intelligence can understand and imitate the natural language of human beings.

Any human language can be processed by computers, although only the most widely spoken have the largest applications and programs. In addition, different tones imply different meanings. For example, the same tone wouldn’t be used to write a cover letter when applying for your dream job compared to the way you chat with your friends on WhatsApp about your weekend plans. Similarly, social science researchers don’t use the same tone as chemical engineers when publishing findings. The point? Natural language processing tries to recognize patterns and interpret text to analyze large amounts of data; it attempts to understand context. Thanks to NLP, we can chat with Siri or Alexa and also appreciate the recommendations we see when using Spotify.

How does our model work?

Now that you’ve got a baseline understanding of NLP, let’s discuss our model. The gender stereotype detection model, though in its infancy, analyzes sentences and is capable of detecting whether a stereotype is present. It’s actually pretty simple:

1. We introduce a sentence.
2. The model analyzes it.
3. It classifies the sentence into one of three categories: Natural’, stereotype or anti-stereotype.

Try it out yourself on our Hugging Face hub!

For example, let’s take the sentence “Women are nurses and men are doctors.” It knows men can also be nurses and women can also be doctors, so the model will detect that a stereotype is present. 

Try it out yourself on our Hugging Face hub!

Artificial intelligence as a social tool

Although more emphasis is being placed on the dangers of artificial intelligence these days, its benefits are vast. On a professional level, it minimizes data analysis time, improves decision-making and increases productivity and quality. And that’s something anyone working in any industry can get behind!

Want to learn more? Explore our website and let’s chat!