All the sessions from Transform 2021 are available on-demand now. An Amazon-built resume-rating algorithm, when trained on men's resumes, taught itself to prefer male candidates and penalize resumes that included the word "women." A major hospital's algorithm, when asked to assign risk scores to patients, gave white patients similar scores to Black patients who were significantly sicker. "If a movie recommendation is flawed, that's not the end of the world. But if you are on the receiving end of a decision [that] is being used by AI, that can be disastrous," Huma Abidi, senior director of AI SW products and engineering at Intel, said during a session on bias and diversity in AI at VentureBeat's Transform 2021 virtual conference.

The need to pursue racial justice is more urgent than ever, especially in the technology industry. The far-reaching scope and power of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) means that any gender and racial bias at the source is multiplied to the nth power in businesses and out in the world. The impact those technology biases have on society as a whole can't be underestimated. When decision-makers in tech companies simply don't reflect the diversity of the general population, it profoundly affects how AI/ML products are conceived, developed, and implemented. Evolve, presented by VentureBeat on December 8th, is a 90-minute event exploring bias, racism, and the lack of diversity across AI product development and management, and why these issues can't be ignored.