AI can be biased, too

AS artificial intelligence (AI) continues to advance and become more widely adopted, ethical discussions surrounding its development have largely centred on manpower displacement, as well as the potential impact of errors or inaccuracies in the programming process.

One issue often overlooked is the inherent bias that comes with the very AI systems that are beginning to drive our society. For example, a study found that online ads for high-paying jobs powered by machine-learning are shown more often to men than women - raising concerns about the potentially discriminatory patterns of complex algorithms.

This isn't the first time that algorithmic systems have appeared to be sexist - or racist, for that matter. Studies have shown that algorithms trained on historically racist data have huge error rates for communities of colour, especially in over-predicting the tendency of a convicted criminal to reoffend. In fact, one common risk-assessment algorithm was shown to be just as accurat…