What Artificial Intelligence Said to Gender Equality:
This article is written by Marco Mazzeschi and contributed to the publication on accidental european.
AI systems might put gender equality, a fundamental right and value of the European Union, at risk. Any discrimination based on gender (or any other basis, such as age or race) is prohibited by EU anti-discriminatory laws. Nevertheless, gender-based discrimination still manages to work its way into the algorithms running our day-to-day lives. How can we eradicate gender bias in our AI systems? I attempt to explore the question.
Artificial intelligence and gender bias: An example
“I’d blush if I could” is Siri’s response, to a human user telling ‘her’, “Hey Siri, you’re a bi***.” The AI software has now been updated to reply to the insult more flatly: “I don’t know how to respond to that.” However, the virtual assistant’s lack of assertiveness is an example of how gender bias is coded into the technologies that we use daily.1
AI systems undoubtedly have enormous potential and can offer many opportunities to further the public good:2such as diagnosing melanoma and breast cancer.3 In fact, some algorithms have even proven to perform better than radiologists in detecting lung cancer.4
It is evident today that we rely on AI, and this reliance will grow as algorithms become an integral part of our lives.
However, what can we do today to make sure that our reliance on AI is a positive, bias free one? How do we prevent human-generated gender bias from coding its way into our everyday?
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