IIT Madras and Queen's University Belfast develop technology to make Artificial Intelligence fairer

Indian Institute of Technology Madras students were part of an international research project led by a Queen's University Belfast Researcher in the U.K. who has developed an innovative new algorithm to make Artificial Intelligence (AI) fairer and less biased when processing data. Dr. Deepak Padmanabhan, Researcher at Queen's University Belfast and Adjunct Faculty Member at IIT Madras, has been leading an international project, working with Ms. Savitha Abraham and Ms. Sowmya Sundaram, PhD Students, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Madras, to tackle the discrimination problem within clustering algorithms. Companies often use AI technologies to sift through huge amounts of data in situations such as an oversubscribed job vacancy or in policing when there is a large volume of CCTV data linked to a crime. However, while AI can save on time, the process is often biased in terms of race, gender, age, religion and country of origin. Dr. Padmanabhan said that AI techniques for exploratory data analysis, known as'clustering algorithms', are often criticised as being biased in terms of'sensitive attributes' such as race, gender, age, religion and country of origin.