Alexa: "Black lives matter! I believe in racial equality.”

The tech industry isn’t particularly known for taking a stand when it comes to political issues; whether it’s March For Our Lives or the #MeToo movement, Silicon Valley has always chosen to stay aloof. However, the massive public support for the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, in addition to the widespread support for BLM within the industry itself, have forced Silicon Valley leaders to take action on the pervasive racial inequality present in the tech industry.

Tech behemoths have talked about advancing diversity in the industry for years, but little action has been taken to support these statements. Since prominent tech giants first released diversity reports in 2014 - revealing predominantly white, Asian, and male workforces - the Silicon Valley labor landscape has barely changed in the way of diversity. In fact, between 2014 and 2020, the percentage of Black or Latino technical workers at Google and Microsoft rose by less than 1%, while Apple’s share of Black technical employees has remained constant.

While Silicon Valley leaders managed to hide behind empty diversity and inclusion policies for years, George Floyd’s death and the subsequent media attention paid to BLM placed technology companies under enormous public pressure to diversify their workforces. CEOs from prominent companies like Snap Inc. and Apple have all publicly expressed their support for the Black Lives Matter movement, with one notable statement made by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Bezos famously posted email screenshots from clients who criticized the company’s decision to advertise for BLM, stating that any client who disagrees with his support of BLM is free to walk away from the company and their free two-day shipping. Alongside the voices of tech industry leaders, the ‘Big Four’ (Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple) have cumulatively committed about $132 million in donations to NGOs and groups facilitating the movement, while smaller companies such as Uber and Slack have donated one million dollars each to advocacy groups like the Center for Policing Equity and the Equal Justice Initiative.

Going further than donations and public posts, some particularly active companies have taken more direct steps to support the movement. Companies such as Adobe, Spotify, and Lyft now recognize Juneteenth (the day commemorating the emancipation of slaves at the close of the Civil War) as a paid holiday, despite the fact that several states still refuse to recognize Juneteenth. In addition to celebrating Juneteenth, tech companies have used their immense technological influence to support BLM. Microsoft and Amazon refused to supply facial profiling technology to US police departments until they introduced improved regulations regarding the use of such technology. Some companies have also made alterations to their core products; for example, UberEats has launched a spotlight of Black- and minority-owned restaurants within its app, and Apple and Google have updated their maps to account for street name changes, such as the newly minted ‘Black Lives Matter Plaza Northwest’ in Washington, D.C.

Tech companies have also brought their support of the BLM movement into homes across the US by modifying their virtual assistants; for example, when asked about Black Lives Matter, Amazon’s Alexa now responds, “Black lives matter. I believe in racial equality. I stand in solidarity with the Black community in the fight against systemic racism and injustice.” Apple’s Siri and the Google Assistant followed suit and now respond in similar fashion.

The spotlight on BLM has made consumers cognizant of their power over tech industry incumbents, who found themselves under significant consumer pressure to examine their own biases and homogenous workforces. As a result, various tech companies have publicly announced substantial diversity and inclusion commitments, including Google’s promise to improve leadership representation of minority groups by 30% by 2025, and Airbnb’s pledge to make 20% of its board and executives people of colour by 2021.

While efforts like these across the industry may be taken positively by some, many criticize this as just lip service. After all, Silicon Valley has struggled for years in reaching their publicly announced diversity and inclusion commitments, leading many to question what makes these promises any different. It’s easy to see why D&I commitments have been questioned; for example, while Snap Inc. CEO Evan Spiegel voiced his support for BLM, Spiegel has also been subject to criticism for refusing to release a diversity report and to be held accountable by the public. In addition, despite Google’s promises to improve minority representation across its workforce, Black workers still comprise only about 3.7% of the workforce, despite making up 13% of the American population.

Given the increasing influence and power of technology in our everyday lives, the current lack of diversity in the sector has the potential to perpetuate inequality for years to come, if left unchecked. One such area of technology that serves to perpetuate biases is Artificial Intelligence (AI), a rapidly expanding technological sub-sector expected to reach a value of $126 billion by 2025. AI learns from provided information; when biased information is used to “teach” AI, the AI model will then “think” in the same biased way as its teacher. A significant example of such harmful biases are Amazon’s efforts to use AI for hiring; Amazon trained its hiring model using resumés submitted over the past 10 years, which consisted of mostly male candidates. As a result, the AI identified men as more suitable candidates than their female counterparts. A lack of gender diversity in STEM led to an uneven pool of applicants dominated by male candidates, which resulted in a permanent bias to the AI model. Amazon’s experience in building an AI hiring model proves that a bias in technology is a natural consequence of biases that exist in the workforce.

With so many instances of racial bias in hiring practices and in the very products created by Silicon Valley’s most successful companies, the industry has a long way to go in resolving such pervasive diversity issues. The support leading tech companies have shown for BLM is shows potential for permanent change, although it remains to be seen whether the actions taken by firms like Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple are to temporarily win the support of consumers until the intensity around the movement loses steam. However, consumers must continue to show tech leaders that working in an industry with the power to shape our future means that they have the responsibility to help us build a better one.