A/HRC/57/70 automation exposure in most countries, and therefore likely to transform structures and roles, though some jobs may be lost. 28 46. Racialization of and racial discrimination in employment, carrying over the positive or negative results of racialized education and training, begin in recruitment, and permeate decisions about orientation, professional development and training, job assignments, recognition and reward, and ultimately promotion and separation, whether voluntary or involuntary.29 Compounding the situation is that the racism in housing, health care, justice, and other spheres, equally fed by racialized generative AI, feed into education and employment.30 Thus, as digitalization becomes increasingly widespread in the world of work, any biases of employers including based on race, but also on gender and other demographic factors, influence decisions. AI, increasingly widely used to analyze and interpret data, because of undetected bias introduces into employment stereotypes and prejudice that work against people of African descent. 47. Few people of African descent inherit wealth, and intergenerational and transgenerational poverty and the consequential disadvantage is well documented. 31 The carry-over from education through employment plays out in economic empowerment among people of African descent. Bias in the coding and in algorithms used in housing, banking, financing, insurance, and even in some public registration numbers, is well documented. In its 2023 report on Economic Empowerment of people of African descent, the Working Group dealt extensively with the bias, prejudice and discrimination against people of African descent in the economic, financial and digital sectors. 48. Digital inequities acutely affect young people globally, facilitate the spread of disinformation and misinformation, and restrict economic opportunities and successes for people of African descent. People of African descent are not well represented in data sets, which impacts algorithmic decision-making systems causing disproportionate harm and discrimination against people of African descent. 32 49. The result of the situation in education, employment and economic empowerment is graphically played out in the data on patents as an indicator of innovation, research and development. The World Intellectual Property Organisation data suggest a bleak picture. In 2023, it shows that computer technology topped the patent registration across the globe with digital communication in the third spot. The report also showed that Asia outstrips every other region, and that apart from registered growth in South Africa, countries with large concentrations of people of African descent are not on the map. 33 While the United States remains the top producer of patents, historical data show that patents by African-Americans fall well below the percentage of African-Americans in the overall population (14.4 per cent) – 2.5 per cent of patents34 and 1.1 per cent of patents in 2021.35 It is important to note that 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 12 Submission by ILO, Paweł Gmyrek, Janine Berg and David Bescond, “Generative AI and jobs: A global analysis of potential effects on job quantity and quality”. Zhisheng Chen, "Ethics and discrimination in artificial intelligence-enabled recruitment practices." Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 10(1), 1-12 (September 2023); Elham Albaroudi, Taha Mansouri and Ali Alameer, “A Comprehensive Review of AI Techniques for Addressing Algorithmic Bias in Job Hiring”, AI, 5(1), 383-404 (February 2024), available at https://doi.org/10.3390/ai5010019. Emilio Ferrara, “Fairness and bias in artificial intelligence: A brief survey of sources, impacts and mitigation strategies”, Sci, 6(1), 3 (December 2023), available at doi:https://doi.org/10.3390/sci6010003 Christian E. Weller and Lily Roberts, “Eliminating the Black-White Wealth Gap Is a Generational Challenge”, Center for American Progress, 19 March 2021, available at https://www.americanprogress.org/article/eliminating-black-white-wealth-gap-generationalchallenge/. See A/HRC/54/67 World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), IP Facts and Figures (Geneva, WIPO, 2023), available at https://www.wipo.int/edocs/pubdocs/en/wipo-pub-943-2023-en-wipo-ip-facts-andfigures-2023.pdf. Jonathan Rothwell, Andre M. Perry and Mike Andrews, “The Black innovators who elevated the United States: Reassessing the Golden Age of Invention”. ZIPPIA, “Inventor Demographics and Statistics in the US”, 5 April 2024, available at https://www.zippia.com/inventor-jobs/demographics/.