AI and machine learning bias has dangerous implications

Algorithms are everywhere in our world, and so is bias. From social media news feeds to streaming service recommendations to online shopping, computer algorithms--specifically, machine learning algorithms--have permeated our day-to-day world. As for bias, we need only examine the 2016 American election to understand how deeply--both implicitly and explicitly--it permeates our society as well. What's often overlooked, however, is the intersection between these two: bias in computer algorithms themselves. Contrary to what many of us might think, technology is not objective. AI algorithms and their decision-making processes are directly shaped by those who build them--what code they write, what data they use to "train" the machine learning models, and how they stress-test the models after they're finished.