Godmothers #0

‘Iconising women in tech’

Godmothers is a new biannual zine positioned ‘at the intersection of feminist economics, ethical AI, philosophy and technology’, placing a crucial spotlight on the often-overlooked perspectives of women in the burgeoning AI revolution. 

According to founder, editor, and former magCulture Flatplan alum Claire Belhassine: ‘Tech is no longer a niche issue. It is an everyone issue, and the power imbalance inherent in its structure is re-embedding values that should have died out a century ago. Women’s voices need to be at the forefront of these civilisational changes. They give birth—literally—to the new. But women are, by design, being kept out of the rooms where power is centred... Godmothers exists to document this critical moment.’

This inaugural issue is titled ‘The Invisible Revolution’ and leads with a cover story on Ava Oppenheimer, the impressive young founder of the 4D machine learning and AI research company TryIto. Inside, she speaks to Godmother about her goal of bridging physics and tech to minimise waste pollution in the fashion industry. Elsewhere, Luba Kassova employs statistical research carried out by her audience strategy consultancy AKAS to reflect on the declining representation of women in AI coverage, three years on from penning The Guardian article that would give Godmothers its name—‘Where Are the ‘Godmothers’ of AI?’; Karoline M. addresses the need for sovereign AI infrastructure, whilst spotlighting the women in tech pushing to integrate Arabic language modelling as a vital safeguard against cultural erasure; and Dr. Kat Eghdamian contemplates the gap between the facets of our intelligence that are quantifiable by AI and the phenomenological experience of being human.