Why Is AI And Machine Learning So Biased? The Answer Is Simple Economics

As AI and machine learning have infused themselves over the last half decade into nearly every corner of our lives, there has been a growing interest in how the biases of these models may be silently impacting society. Much of this focus has been on the issues of biased training data and a homogeneous workforce that lacks sufficient diversity of experience to recognize bias. However, lost in this conversation is the far bigger driving force: the lack of economic incentive to minimize bias in the technologies that increasingly power our lives. The digital world is an incredibly biased place. Geographically, linguistically, demographically, economically and culturally, the technological revolution has skewed heavily towards a small number of very economically privileged slices of society.