Uber and Lyft overcharge riders traveling to and from non-white neighborhoods, study reveals

A new report suggests Uber and Lyft are bias. Researchers analyzed data from millions of trips in Chicago, uncovering those traveling to and from low-income and non-white areas were overcharged per mile. However, the prejudice does not stem from the drive, but derives from the decision-making algorithms used to determine pricing. Aylin Caliskan, with George Washington University, said: 'Given a type of data, AI algorithms learn the patterns in that data--so if you give an algorithm data from the social domain, they end up learning the patterns of society.' 'Since our society is biased, these models end up learning these biases as well.' 'Then, when they're used in the social context to make decisions about human beings, they use that biased data to make decisions that not only perpetuates societal biases but even amplifies them.' Researchers created a map showing that some areas were charged as much as $5.10 per mile, compared to just 85 cents.