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Biased AI can be bad for humans
Why it’s important to promote fairness in algorithms
Whether we like it or not, technology is part of our lives.
As we surf the web, read our social media feed, listen to music, or watch a video on YouTube, we rely on algorithms to get better recommendations.
The temptation to let algorithms decide for us is strong, and legitimate — relying on algorithms, after all, is typically advantageous. Especially for analytical tasks, computers generally outperform humans, and they are also extremely fast learners.
In 2017, Google’s AlphaZero program defeated the Stockfish 8 program at chess. Stockfish 8 was the world’s computer chess champion until then. Do you know how long it took AlphaZero to learn chess from scratch and prepare for the match against Stockfish 8? Only four hours.
Even when we don’t rely on recommender systems to decide which film to watch or which playlist to listen to, we entrust Google and other search algorithms with searching for relevant and trustworthy information. How many people nowadays rely on their gut instinct or sense of orientation alone to navigate space? Using Google Maps is way more convenient.
In the last decade, Big Data usage has grown to the point where it touches almost every aspect of our lives…
