Amazon and Ocado sign up for UK engineering initiative
Over 100 consumer brands and businesses, including Amazon, Facebook, Ocado and TfL, have come together in a bid to change online image search results for the word ‘engineer’.
The announcement comes on This is Engineering Day, part of a nationwide campaign led by the Royal Academy of Engineering to change “the misrepresentation of engineering online”, celebrate the contribution of engineers, and encourage more young people to consider a career in the profession.
An AI machine learning model, known as a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN), analysed over 1,100 images of engineers sourced online, and generated images based on this given dataset. The majority were of a white male wearing a hard hat. An online search, conducted by the Royal Academy of Engineering on 21st October, found that 63% of images on the first page of the search results were of a person in a hard hat, despite the fact that only a small minority of professional engineers wear hard hats most of the time.
The aforementioned companies have signed a pledge to increase the public visibility of more representative images of engineers and engineering, and helped create a new library of free to use images that better represent what engineers and engineering really look like (www.flickr.com/thisisengineering/).
The campaign’s partners and supporters will also be active on social media and through a range of different activities and events on This is Engineering Day including:
Amazon Alexa will answer questions about This is Engineering Day and the role of engineers, and Amazon will run engineering-focused tours and STEM (science, technology, engineering, maths) workshops in its fulfilment centres on 6th November
Facebook and Ocado are creating and promoting new engineering video content featuring their engineers.
Dr Hayaatun Sillem, Chief Executive of the Royal Academy of Engineering, says: “Engineers play a profoundly important role in shaping the world around us – from designing our cities and transport systems, to delivering clean energy solutions, enhancing cybersecurity and advancing healthcare – but that’s simply not reflected in online image searches.”
“That’s why on This is Engineering Day I’m appealing to anyone who uses or promotes images of engineers to join us in challenging outdated and narrow stereotypes of engineering. We want to ensure that engineers are portrayed in a much more representative way, and that we help young people see the fantastic variety of opportunities on offer.”