Some of the decisions algorithms make about our lives are fairly benign, such as those irresistible “Suggestions for you” on Netflix. But it gets far murkier when artificial intelligence and machine learning are used by businesses and governments for decision-making that affects our lives without us ever knowing about it. And worse, without us being able to appeal against those decisions.
And “when considering the role of algorithms in decision-making we need to think not only of cases where an algorithm is the complete and final arbiter of a decision process, but also the many cases where algorithms play a key role in shaping a decision process even when the final decision isBut many of these pieces of software have bias baked into them, what Joy Buolamwini, founder of the Algorithmic Justice League, calls “the coded gaze”.
And this algorithmic bias, as Joy Buolamwini found out when going through a demo of a Hong Kong startup’s “social robot” that couldn’t detect her face, can “travel as quickly as it takes to download some files off ofThe startup used the same generic facial recognition software that she had previously used for her undergrad assignment at Georgia Tech, where she discovered that it didn’t work on her face— and she had to get her roommate to stand in for her.