UCD student's research takes down an 80-million image artificial intelligence database

A UCD student's research has resulted in the withdrawal of an 80-million image library used to train artificial intelligence systems. The research by PhD student Abeba Birhane found that hundreds of millions of images in academic datasets that are used to develop AI systems and applications are partly based on racist and misogynistic labels and slurs, according to the Irish Software Research Centre (Lero) and University College Dublin's Complex Software Lab. "Already, MIT has deleted its much-cited '80 Million Tiny Images' dataset, asking researchers and developers to cease using the library to train AI and ML system," said the software research centre in a statement. "MIT's decision came as a direct result of the research carried out by University College Dublin based Lero researcher Abeba Birhane and Vinay Prabhu, chief scientist at UnifyID, a privacy start-up in Silicon Valley." In the course of the work, the Lero statement says, Ms Birhane found the MIT database contained thousands of images labelled with racist and misogynistic insults and derogatory terms.