Artificial intelligence is racist and sexist - but only because they are being fed the wrong data

An MIT study has revealed the way artificial intelligence system collect data often makes them racist and sexist. Researchers looked at a range of systems, and found many of them exhibited a shocking bias. The team then developed system to help researchers make sure their systems are less biased. 'Computer scientists are often quick to say that the way to make these systems less biased is to simply design better algorithms,' said lead author Irene Chen, a PhD student who wrote the paper with MIT professor David Sontag and postdoctoral associate Fredrik D. Johansson. 'But algorithms are only as good as the data they're using, and our research shows that you can often make a bigger difference with better data.'