Discriminating algorithms: 5 times AI showed prejudice

Modern life runs on intelligent algorithms. The data-devouring, self-improving computer programmes that underlie the artificial intelligence revolution already determine Google search results, Facebook news feeds and online shopping recommendations. Increasingly, they also decide how easily we get a mortgage or a job interview, the chances we will get stopped and searched by the police on our way home, and what penalties we face if we commit a crime, too. So they must be unimpeachable in their decision-making, right? Skewed input data, false logic or just the prejudices of their programmers mean AIs all too easily reproduce and even amplify human biases – as the following five examples show.