AI Can Be As Racist And Sexist As We Are

Can AI be biased? Yes. And that’s because of us. When it comes to programming our artificial intelligence machines, the data we humans use may be making them biased. “As machines are trained on human data, they also learn human culture and effects about the world, and bias is part of this,” explains Aylin Caliskan, a ‎postdoctoral research associate at Princeton University. Caliskan coauthored a paper for Science discussing how AI systems pick up on human biases through the material we train them with. While we teach our AI to understand our language, the language given is also embedded with its own biases. The first test of identifying biases involved flowers, insects, instruments and weapons. Caliskan and her team found that the AI machine, which should be neutral, began developing biases. It showed biased towards flowers and instruments. And developed a bias against insects and weapons. Their next tests focused on gender, age, and race.