Writing in
The New York Times, Kate Crawford, principal researcher at Microsoft, debates the inherent bias in artificial intelligence: "According to some prominent voices in the tech world,
artificial intelligence presents a looming existential threat to humanity: Warnings by luminaries like Elon Musk and Nick Bostrom about 'the singularity' — when machines become smarter than
humans — have attracted millions of dollars and spawned a multitude of conferences. But this hand-wringing is a distraction from the very real problems with artificial intelligence today, which
may already be exacerbating inequality in the workplace, at home and in our legal and judicial systems. Sexism, racism and other forms of discrimination are being built into the machine-learning
algorithms that underlie the technology behind many 'intelligent' systems that shape how we are categorized and advertised to. Take a small example from last year: Users discovered that Google’s
photo app, which applies automatic labels to pictures in digital photo albums, was classifying images of black people as gorillas. Google apologized; it was unintentional."
Read the whole story at The New York Times »
