To address this ever-growing issue, the White House today released a Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights. This outlines five principles that should guide the design, use and deployment of automated systems to protect Americans in this age of AI.

The irony is not lost on Kate Saenko. Now that humans have programmed computers to learn, they want to know exactly what the computers have learned, and how they make decisions after their learning process is complete. To do that, Saenko, a Boston University College of Arts & Sciences associate professor of computer science, used humans--asking them to look at dozens of pictures depicting steps that the computer may have taken on its road to a decision, and identify its most likely path. The humans gave Saenko answers that made sense, but there was a problem: they made sense to humans, and humans, Saenko knew, have biases. In fact, humans don't even understand how they themselves make decisions.

As a teenager in Nigeria, I tried to build an artificial intelligence system. I was inspired by the same dream that motivated the pioneers in the field: That we could create an intelligence of pure logic and objectivity that would free humanity from human error and human foibles. I was working with weak computer systems and intermittent electricity, and needless to say my AI project failed. Eighteen years later--as an engineer researching artificial intelligence, privacy, and machine-learning algorithms--I'm seeing that so far, the premise that AI can free us from subjectivity or bias is also disappointing. We are creating intelligence in our own image.

As a teenager in Nigeria, I tried to build an artificial intelligence system. I was inspired by the same dream that motivated the pioneers in the field: That we could create an intelligence of pure logic and objectivity that would free humanity from human error and human foibles. I was working with weak computer systems and intermittent electricity, and needless to say my AI project failed. Eighteen years later--as an engineer researching artificial intelligence, privacy and machine-learning algorithms--I'm seeing that so far, the premise that AI can free us from subjectivity or bias is also disappointing. We are creating intelligence in our own image.

As a teenager in Nigeria, I tried to build an artificial intelligence system. I was inspired by the same dream that motivated the pioneers in the field: That we could create an intelligence of pure logic and objectivity that would free humanity from human error and human foibles. I was working with weak computer systems and intermittent electricity, and needless to say my AI project failed. Eighteen years later -- as an engineer researching artificial intelligence, privacy and machine-learning algorithms -- I'm seeing that so far, the premise that AI can free us from subjectivity or bias is also disappointing. We are creating intelligence in our own image.