FICO scores leave out 'people on the margins,' Upstart's CEO says. Can AI make lending more inclusive -- without creating bias of its own?

Dave Girouard, the chief executive of the AI lending platform Upstart Holdings Inc. UPST, -2.51% in Silicon Valley, understood the worry. "The concern that the use of AI in credit decisioning could replicate or even amplify human bias is well-founded," he said in his testimony at the hearing. But Girouard, who co-founded Upstart in 2012, also said he had created the San Mateo, Calif.-based company to broaden access to affordable credit through "modern technology and data science." And he took aim at the shortcomings he sees in traditional credit scoring. The FICO score, introduced in 1989, has become "the default way banks judge a loan applicant," Girouard said in his testimony.