It's been recently brought to light that algorithms have embedded racism into our software. But don't blame the robots just yet, because it's the people who made them.
The problem is that our biases were fed into this software. I'm not saying that it's intentional, but it's what happened. So now we have software that will take this to another level and feed on itself.
As much as we would like to believe that racism is a thing of the past, in reality, it still exists in our society. After all, it was less than 60 years ago that horrific attacks occurred in Selma Alabama and elsewhere, and for many, the wounds have still not healed. A concerted effort must be taken to educate people and bring people together to break down the barriers that divide us.
Racism is rooted in ignorance. Scientists have investigated and proven that there is nothing in skin pigmentation that makes one person any different from another except for color. But people still want to believe it to be otherwise.
An article by "New Scientist" last year highlighted five ways in which software algorithms used racial biases in coming up with their solutions. The article discusses software that was mainly used by law enforcement to determine things like sentencing guidelines, the likelihood of people to recommit crimes and crime hot spots. When we see that there's already issues of racism within the law enforcement community, which society is trying to deal with, adding this only makes everything more difficult for everyone.
We often tend to dismiss talk about racism if we believe we aren't racist. But even those who aren't racist, when they deal with these systems which serve to perpetuate racism they likely will be affected by them. This could serve to not only solidify wrong beliefs and biases but also introduce new ones.
This issue also appeared in other software used in devices that are supposed to sense hand motions, in some cases, they would only detect motions of a white person. This may indicate a lack of diversity in the workforce or in the field of AI, but in any case, it shows that we have a problem.
I think if these machines are left to continue along this path this will only get worse. And they can undermine societal efforts to curb racism by reintroducing it in subtle ways. Knowledge and education are the keys to combating these problems in our software and in our society.
Now that we became aware of these problems we should be able to take measures to fix them and prevent them from becoming bigger. I think we have made many strides in combating racism and other social injustices, but we're still a long way from eradicating the problem.
If education is the solution, then being in college means we can be a part of this solution. If we hold an open mind and take a proactive approach at combating racism in any way - we can.
