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Artificial intelligence isn't just science fiction any more. It's all over the place, and it has the potential to change the way we do everything from harvest crops to conduct wars. However, if your image of an artificially intelligent machine is one that thinks for itself and is capable of perfect, rational thinking without any biases, think again. Evidence is increasingly suggesting that the artificial intelligence currently being built is deeply vulnerable to the biases of the people and information programming them. New research from the University of Virginia found that artificial intelligence can exhibit sexist behaviors, even if programmers don't intentionally instill those values. Considering how much the future of many industries (not to mention our personal lives) may depend on various forms of AI, bias of all kinds is a serious issue.
Data released recently suggests that the global impact of AI will be around $15 trillion — yes, trillion with a T. Analysts think robots will influence everything from health and medicine to manufacturing and the financial sector. And with the first ever album composed by an AI in collaboration with a human is also being released this week, the sky's the limit. But looking at how AIs learn about the world, and figuring out what they do with that knowledge, has revealed that artificial intelligence may just reflect the same biases and prejudices that their creators exhibit — namely, sexism and racism.
As We Rely More On AI, It Might Become A Weapon For Stereotypes
Because of the potential impact of artificial intelligence on our society, this problem needs to be fixed soon. The potential for AIs in the future to use sexist associations to make poor choices that disadvantage women and people of color is vast, and worrying.
AIs were already primed to make women's positions more precarious: As Foreign Policy argued earlier this year, many of the positions and areas AI will dominate in the economy will remove work from women, as they'll be focused on routine information processing tasks where women climbing the career ladder often find themselves. But experts also point out that machines may be given the power to make decisions — by conducting job interviews, for instance, or determining who gets into a college or is awarded a loan — that could be heavily influenced by their unacknowledged biases.
So how can we stop the problem? Some people advocate for more women to work in AI production, but while that is undoubtedly a step in the right direction, a lot of the problem comes from the world the AIs are learning about, and how they are taught to correct what they absorb. "If we look at how systems can be discriminatory now," wrote Kate Crawford in the New York Times, "we will be much better placed to design fairer artificial intelligence. But that requires far more accountability from the tech community. Governments and public institutions can do their part as well: As they invest in predictive technologies, they need to commit to fairness and due process."
Another issue lies within the mechanisms of capitalism itself. Because a lot of these machines are programmed by private companies, they don't want to release their AI algorithms to be analyzed for bias. The company behind the recidivism controversy, Northpointe Inc., refuses to let anybody investigate their algorithm because it's "commercially sensitive." Tactics like this avoid accountability, which is crucial for eliminating bias in these programs.
Whether or not reinforcement learning could help programmers teach artificial intelligence to be less biased remains an open question, but one thing's for sure: The days of dominant artificial intelligence permeating our lives are coming — and if they're allowed to parrot and reinforce stereotypes, they certainly aren't going to make the world a better place.