Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Bias
When we think of artificial intelligence, we think of it as objective, impartial and unrelentingly logical. But we need to remember that, at one point, AI is programmed to learn by humans. To learn, machines are fed data sets and they can be full of historical or human bias. Machine learning is something we need consider in the wider community, because as forms of AI increasingly thread into our day-to-day lives, if you’re not male, or white, there could be some problems. A very easy example first. Take Pokémon Go. When Pokémon Go was released, users in New York found the gyms and PokeStops appearing more in predominantly whiteneighbourhoods . Turns out Pokémon Go was using a crowdsourced dataset from a previous augmented reality game. The people who wrote the algorithms weren’t a diverse group and so their bias ended up in the game. If diverse groups are required to help create unbiased products then it’s worrying when you consider how unwelcoming the tech industry i...