Is AI Biased?
We all know how artificial intelligence has made things easier for us, how phenomenal it is at reducing tasks in the workplace and how it creates sophisticated jobs that didn’t exist before, but we have to face the truth that AI is biased. I will show this in very clear explanations about how AI is biased:
Exclusion Bias
Just a simple search on Google of babies will show you how biased AI is. Google will give you a result of numerous pictures of pale white babies and just a few pictures of black, Indian and other people of colour babies. The AI algorithm does not include an adequate representation of different kinds of babies.AI always shows a lack of inclusion, which can be a little bit problematic. It can be harmful to other people, since we all know that people at the end of the day want one thing, which is representation. If that is not shown, how will that make them feel?
Prejudice Bias
Through a simple search, I was able to find out about the AI chatbot that was heavily racist. The Microsoft chatbot that was named Tay was heavily prejudiced against people of colour, and it was a huge fan of Adolf Hitler, which was just not a good look. This AI chatbot led to a detrimental impact on people of colour and also on the makers of the chatbot. This AI chatbot obviously made Microsoft look horrible in other people’s eyes. Let’s not forget that Microsoft is a huge, influential company that a lot of people admire, but because of that racist chatbot that they made, all of that changed. This highlights the fact that biased AI has a lot of detrimental effects.
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AI shows prejudice and bias in numerous ways by talking about stereotypes or assumptions that can paint a certain race or gender negatively. A simple example of AI being prejudiced is when a sexist AI chatbot claims that software engineering jobs are only for men. This statement puts women down by claiming that they can’t do a certain job or that they are not capable of doing it. We all know that now in this modern world, anyone, any gender, can do a certain job. Before, it was known that only the male gender could do tech jobs because it was a male-dominated field. But that changed a long time ago. More women are also present in the tech industry, doing different jobs from software developers to data scientists, not capturing this information shows that it is indeed biased.
The bias shown in artificial intelligence proves that artificial intelligence is not as perfect as other people claim it to be. Yes, I agree it has a lot of beautiful sides to it that are actually beneficial. The thing is that bias is the problem standing in the way of AI actually improving. This alone makes people feel like there is still a long way to go, and that is the truth.
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