Why computers are distinctly non-pc when making decisions

ROBOTIC artificial intelligence platforms that are increasingly replacing human decision makers are inherently racist and sexist, experts have claimed.

Programmes designed to “pre-select” candidates for university places or to assess eligibility for insurance cover or bank loans are likely to discriminate against women and non-white applicants, according to their research.

Prof Noel Sharkey, co-director of the Foundation for Responsible Robotics, said more women needed to be encouraged into the IT industry to redress the automatic bias. Just nine per cent of the engineering workforce in the UK is female, with women making up only 20 per cent of those taking A-level physics.

“We have a problem,” Prof Sharkey told Today on BBC Radio 4. “We need many more women coming into this field to solve it.”

His warning came as it was revealed a prototype programme developed to shortlist candidates for a UK medical school had discriminated against women, black and other ethnic minority candidates.

He added researchers at Boston University had demonstrated the inherent bias in AI algorithms by training a machine to analyse text collected from Google News.

When they asked the machine to complete the sentence “Man is to computer programmers as woman is to X”, the machine answered “homemaker”.

Maxine Mackintosh, a leading expert in health data, said the problem is mainly the fault of skewed data on robotic platforms.

“These big data are really a social mirror – they reflect the biases and inequalities we have in society,” she told the BBC. “If you want to take steps towards changing that you can’t just use historical information.”