AI has exacerbated racial bias in housing. Could it help eliminate it instead?

Our upcoming magazine issue is devoted to long-term problems. Few problems are longer-term or more intractable than America's systemic racial inequality. And a particularly entrenched form of it is housing discrimination. A long history of policies by banks, insurance companies, and real estate brokers has denied people of color a fair shot at homeownership, concentrated wealth and property in the hands of white people and communities, and perpetuated de facto segregation. Though these policies--with names like redlining, blockbusting, racial zoning, restrictive covenants, and racial steering--are no longer legal, their consequences persist, and they are sometimes still practiced covertly or inadvertently.