Artificial intelligence built on mountains of potentially biased information has created a real risk of automating discrimination, but is there any way to re-educate the machines?
The question for some is extremely urgent. In this ChatGPT era, AI will generate more and more decisions for health care providers, bank lenders or lawyers, using whatever was scoured from the internet as source material.
AI's underlying intelligence, therefore, is only as good as the world it came from, as likely to be filled with wit, wisdom, and usefulness, as well as hatred, prejudice and rants.
«It's dangerous because people are embracing and adopting AI software and really depending on it,» said Joshua Weaver, Director of Texas Opportunity & Justice Incubator, a legal consultancy.
«We can get into this feedback loop where the bias in our own selves and culture informs bias in the AI and becomes a sort of reinforcing loop,» he said.
Making sure technology more accurately reflects human diversity is not just a political choice.
Other uses of AI, like facial recognition, have seen companies thrown into hot water with authorities for discrimination.
This was the case against Rite-Aid, a US pharmacy chain, where in-store cameras falsely tagged consumers, particularly women and