Biased Algorithms Learn From Biased Data: 3 Kinds Biases Found In AI Datasets

"Imagine a scenario in which self-driving cars fail to recognize people of color as people--and are thus more likely to hit them--because the computers were trained on data sets of photos in which such people were absent or underrepresented," Joy Buolamwini, a computer scientist and researcher at MIT, told Fortune in a recent interview. Buolamwini's research revealed that facial recognition software from tech giants Microsoft, IBM and Amazon, among others could identify lighter-skinned men but not darker-skinned women. It happens because of something that is mounting alarm: algorithmic bias. Algorithms are the foundation of machine learning. They are what drives intelligent machines to make decisions.