Bath researcher shows machines can be prejudiced too

Working with colleagues at Princeton University, a researcher from the University of Bath has shown that artificial intelligence (AI) can exhibit the same prejudice and bias as humans. Dr Joanna Bryson (pictured above) from the Computer Science department at Bath is spending a year at the Centre for Information Technology Policy (CITP) at Princeton, researching the ethics of computing and AI. "The term'AI' has negative associations yet we use AI every day. It is entrenched in almost everything we do with IT, from Google to Facebook to smartphones," she said. While artificial intelligence and machine learning are in a period of astounding growth, there are concerns that these technologies may be prone to the same prejudice and unfairness as many human institutions, say the researchers.