Larger training sets don't reduce bias in artificial intelligence Many tech companies have operated under the assumption that training artificial intelligence on more data can help fix the ongoing problem of AIs replicating human prejudices. But a study has found that AIs trained on increasingly larger data sets can produce even more racist results. Abeba Birhane at the Mozilla Foundation and her colleagues compared two data sets provided by the Large-scale Artificial Intelligence Open Network (LAION), a non-profit that offers open-source data sets for AI training.

A Google service that automatically labels images produced starkly different results depending on skin tone on a given image. The company fixed the issue, but the problem is likely much broader. In the fight against the novel coronavirus, many countries ordered that citizens have their temperature checked at train stations or airports. The device needed in such situations, a hand-held thermometer, has risen from a specialist item to a common sight. A branch of Artificial Intelligence known as "computer vision" focuses on automated image labeling.