How to Keep Your AI From Turning Into a Racist Monster

If you're not sure whether algorithmic bias could derail your plan, you should be. Megan Garcia (@meganegarcia) is a senior fellow and director of New America California, where she studies cybersecurity, AI, and diversity in technology. Algorithmic bias--when seemingly innocuous programming takes on the prejudices either of its creators or the data it is fed--causes everything from warped Google searches to barring qualified women from medical school. It doesn't take active prejudice to produce skewed results (more on that later) in web searches, data-driven home loan decisions, or photo-recognition software. It just takes distorted data that no one notices and corrects for.