'White' artificial intelligence risks exacerbating racial inequality, study suggests

The "whiteness" of artificial intelligence (AI) risks a "racially homogenous" workforce as humans create machines skewed by their biases, a study suggests. The University of Cambridge study examined AI in society, including in films, Google searches, stock images and robot voices. Researchers suggested machines have distinct racial identities and this perpetuates "real world" racial stereotypes. Non-abstract AI in internet search engine results usually had either Caucasian features or were the colour white, according to the researchers. Most virtual voices in devices talked in "standard white middle-class English" as "ideas of adding black dialects have been dismissed as too controversial or outside the target market," the study concluded.