There are many types of A.I bias—from Twitter bots who unfortunately learned a little too well, to U.S. healthcare algorithms that disadvantaged certain groups—but the most common one can be found on your everyday Facebook feed. Facebook’s AI-powered personalisation tool is designed to suggest content it thinks we’ll like and engage with.

"With the recent explosion of real-world A.I applications, these risks are now out there, potentially unchecked, roaming across public data."

Whats the big deal?

These risks weren’t such a big deal when AI was more of a theoretical exercise, known only to data scientists, but with the recent explosion of real-world AI applications, these risks are now out there, potentially unchecked, roaming across public data.

The big question is: will AI be necessarily a good thing for the future of work, for the future of healthcare, for the future of technology and society? Most experts say yes—with a few fundamental caveats.

The need for transparency

“AI can help humans with bias, but only if humans are working together to tackle bias in AI.”

What's the lesson?

The lesson here is that AI is a tool, just like any other, and its efficacy is almost entirely down to the health and sanctity of its data. Feed an algorithm prejudiced data, and you’ll get a prejudicial result. AI is neither inherently better nor fairer than a human. It’s open to the same creeping biases that we all face. The trick, over the next five or ten years, will be learning to recognise those biases, and mitigate their effects.

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