5.10 Bias and Unethical use of Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence has become integral part of modern society. It has brought positive impact in many areas of our daily lives but has some negative impact as well. Biased and unethical use of AI based systems has become a big concern all over the world as it can result in injustice to specific people. AI algorithms are developed by humans who can intentionally or unintentionally introduce bias in them. Bias means unfairness or discrimination against someone based on race, ethnicity, gender, age, etc. Unethical means something that is not morally correct such as unfair usage of AI related with violation of personal data or gaining unauthorized access to other's systems. AI based systems are not thoroughly checked for racial or gender biases. If the data used in training an AI system is incorrect, impartial, incomplete or biased in any way then the resulting AI system can cause injustice, hurt people and cause harm.
In, 2015, Amazon realized that their AI algorithm used for hiring employees favored men over women. The reason for this injustice was that the algorithm was based on the number of resumes submitted over the past ten years mostly belonged to male applicants.
As another example, it was observed that the facial recognition technology has sometimes produced wrong results for people with darker skin tones. This can cause injustice to people who are misidentified by the system in a criminal investigation.
The following are some examples of bias and unethical use of AI systems.
Privacy Breaches
Privacy breaches are concerned with the violation of protection of personal data. AI systems have the ability to store and process huge amount of data which is vulnerable to privacy violation.
Social Manipulation and Misinformation
AI systems can spread propaganda and manipulate social media trends such as peoples' likes and dislikes or changing their opinions related with all the aspects of society.