The Technology of Outrage: Bias in Artificial Intelligence
This work addresses the issue of bias in AI decision-making for the AI community, offering incremental practical solutions rather than a novel technical breakthrough.
The paper tackles the problem of algorithmic bias in AI by analyzing the equivocation around the term 'bias' and identifying three forms of outrage (intellectual, moral, political) in reactions to it, resulting in three practical approaches for the AI community to address bias, such as clarifying language and developing new auditing methods.
Artificial intelligence and machine learning are increasingly used to offload decision making from people. In the past, one of the rationales for this replacement was that machines, unlike people, can be fair and unbiased. Evidence suggests otherwise. We begin by entertaining the ideas that algorithms can replace people and that algorithms cannot be biased. Taken as axioms, these statements quickly lead to absurdity. Spurred on by this result, we investigate the slogans more closely and identify equivocation surrounding the word 'bias.' We diagnose three forms of outrage-intellectual, moral, and political-that are at play when people react emotionally to algorithmic bias. Then we suggest three practical approaches to addressing bias that the AI community could take, which include clarifying the language around bias, developing new auditing methods for intelligent systems, and building certain capabilities into these systems. We conclude by offering a moral regarding the conversations about algorithmic bias that may transfer to other areas of artificial intelligence.