Why Is Anyone Surprised That AI Is Biased?
July 25, 2024
Let’s top this one last time, all right? Algorithms are biased against specific groups.
Why are they biased? They’re biased because the testing data sets contain limited information about diversity.
What types of diversity? There’s a range but it usually involves racism, sexism, and socioeconomic status.
How does this happen? It usually happens, not because the designers are racist or whatever, but from blind ignorance. They don’t see outside their technology boxes so their focus is limited.
But they can be racist, sexist, etc? Yes, they’re human and have their personal prejudices. Those can be consciously or inadvertently programmed into a data set.
How can this be fixed? Get larger, cleaner data sets that are more reflective of actual populations.
Did you miss any minority groups? Unfortunately yes and it happens to be an oldie but a goodie: disabled folks. Stephen Downes writes that, “ChatGPT Shows Hiring Bias Against People With Disabilities.” Downes commented on an article from Futurity that describes how a doctoral student from the University of Washington studies on ChatGPT ranks resumes of abled vs. disabled people.
The test discovered when ChatGPT was asked to rank resumes, people with resumes that included references to a disability were ranked lower. This part is questionable because it doesn’t state the prompt given to ChatGPT. When the generative text AI was told to be less “ableist” and some of the “disabled” resumes ranked higher. The article then goes into a valid yet overplayed argument about diversity and inclusion. No solutions were provided.
Downes asked questions that also beg for solutions:
“This is a problem, obviously. But in assessing issues of this type, two additional questions need to be asked: first, how does the AI performance compare with human performance? After all, it is very likely the AI is drawing on actual human discrimination when it learns how to assess applications. And second, how much easier is it to correct the AI behaviour as compared to the human behaviour? This article doesn’t really consider the comparison with humans. But it does show the AI can be corrected. How about the human counterparts?”
Solutions? Anyone?
Whitney Grace, July 25, 2024
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