Even black robots are impacted by racism

The researchers collected photos of people of different races and Nao, a humanoid robot, and changed the color of the robot's shell to a variety of human skin tones. Their experimental setup relied on the "shooter bias" procedure, which has participants playing the role of a police officer who has to decide if they should or shouldn't shoot their gun when shown different images. Those photos had a person or Nao in it, either holding a weapon in their hand or some other, benign object. The study subjects saw the picture for only a split second and were asked to act on instinct. The study found that the participants were faster to shoot an armed black human and robot than they were to shoot their white counterparts.