Can artificial intelligence be trusted with our human rights?

Sir Reginald Ansett was a captain of industry in the old-fashioned sense. The eponymous head of one of Australia’s major airlines, Reg Ansett had strong views. One of his views was that women don’t make good pilots.¹

But he met his match with Deborah Jane Lawrie. By age 18, Lawrie had earned a private pilot licence. By 24, she had a commercial licence and two university degrees. A year later, in 1976, Lawrie applied to join the pilot training program for Ansett Airlines.

Reg Ansett said that his company was not discriminating against Lawrie on the basis of her sex…[just] that women do not make good pilots.

She was ignored.

Over the next two years, she applied again and again. Eventually, in July 1978, she was interviewed and rejected. Ansett’s policy was to employ only male pilots, something they sought to justify by reference to a range of prejudices about women’s ability: physical strength, menstruation, pregnancy and childbirth.

Employing the sort of mental acrobatics that would have been forbidden in one of his passenger planes, Reg Ansett said that his company was not discriminating against Lawrie on the basis of her sex; it was just his strong personal view that women do not make good pilots.

Lawrie pressed her claim all the way to the High Court and Ansett was ordered to include Lawrie in its next pilot training program, but her problems didn’t end there. While she was included in the next intake, the company tried to terminate her after