Racist & sexist AI bots could deny you job, insurance & loans – tech experts

‘Artificial intelligence programs designed to assess candidates for university places and bank loans may be inherently racist and sexist, according to technology experts.
Researchers believe that machine-learning algorithms, far from making the world more equitable, are now mimicking society’s inequality by discriminating against women and ethnic minorities.
“This is beginning to come up a lot in areas like shortlisting people for jobs, insurance, loans – all those things,” Noel Sharkey, Co-Director of the Foundation for Responsible Robotics, told the BBC’s Today program.
Sharkey cited the example of research from Boston University in which an AI was trained to read Google News. When asked during a word association game, “man is to computer programmer what woman is to x”, the computer replied “homemaker.”
“We have a problem,” said Sharkey. “We need more women coming into this field to solve it.”’
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