What is AI bias really, and how can you combat it?

Let’s start with the basics.

A simple definition of AI bias could sound like that: a phenomenon that occurs when an AI algorithm produces results that are systematically prejudiced due to erroneous assumptions in the machine learning process.

Bias in artificial intelligence can take many forms—from racial bias and gender prejudice to recruiting inequity and age discrimination. The underlying reason for AI bias lies in human prejudice–conscious or unconscious–lurking in AI algorithms throughout their development. AI solutions adopt and scale human biases.

One potential source of this issue is prejudiced hypotheses made when designing AI models, or algorithmic bias. Psychologists claim there’re about 180 cognitive biases, some of which may find their way into hypotheses and influence how AI algorithms are designed.

An example of algorithmic AI bias could be assuming that a model would automatically be less biased when it can’t access protected classes, say, race. In reality, removing the protected classes from the analysis doesn’t erase racial bias from AI algorithms. The model could still produce prejudiced results relying on related non-protected factors, for example, geographic data—the phenomenon known as proxy discrimination.

Another common reason for replicating AI bias is the low quality of the data on which AI models are trained. The training data may incorporate human decisions or echo societal or historical inequities.

For instance, if an employer uses an AI-based recruiting tool trained on historical employee data in a predominantly male industry, chances are AI would replicate gender bias.

The same applies to natural language processing algorithms. When learning on real-world data, like news reports or social media posts, AI is likely to show language bias and reinforce existing prejudices. This is what happened with Google Translate, which tends to be biased against women when translating from languages with gender-neutral pronouns. The AI engine powering the app is more likely to generate such translations as “he invests” and “she takes care of the children” than vice versa.

AI bias can stem from the way training data is collected and processed as well. The mistakes data scientists may fall prey to range from excluding valuable entries to inconsistent labeling to under- and over-sampling. Under-sampling, for example, can cause skews in class distribution and make AI models ignore minority classes completely.

Over-sampling, in turn, may lead to the over-representation of certain groups or factors in the training datasets. For instance, crimes committed in locations frequented by the police are more likely to be recorded in the training dataset simply because that is where the police patrol. Consequently, the algorithms trained on such data are likely to reflect this disproportion.

Another important source of AI bias is the feedback of real-world users interacting with AI models. People may reinforce bias baked in already deployed AI models, often without realizing it. For example, a credit card company may use an AI algorithm that mildly reflects social bias to advertise their products, targeting less-educated people with offers featuring higher interest rates. These people may find themselves clicking on these types of ads without knowing that other social groups are shown better offers.

The most common classification of bias in artificial intelligence takes the source of prejudice as the base criterion, putting AI biases into three categories—algorithmic, data, and human. Still, AI researchers and practitioners urge us to look out for the latter, as human bias underlies and outweighs the other two. Here’re the most common types of AI bias that creep into the algorithms.

This type of AI bias arises when the frequency of events in the training dataset doesn’t accurately reflect reality. Take an example of a customer fraud detection tool that underperformed in a remote geographic region, marking all customers living in the area with a falsely high fraud score.

It turned out that the training dataset the tool was relying on claimed every historical investigation in the region as a fraud case. The reason was that because of the region’s remoteness, fraud case investigators wanted to make sure every new claim was indeed fraudulent before they traveled to the area. So, the frequency of fraudulent events in the training dataset was way higher than it should have been in reality.

This type of AI bias occurs if training data is either unrepresentative or is selected without proper randomization. An example of the selection bias is well illustrated by the research conducted by Joy Buolamwini, Timnit Gebru, and Deborah Raji, where they looked at three commercial image recognition products. The tools were to classify 1,270 images of parliament members from European and African countries. The study found that all three tools performed better on male than female faces and showed a more substantial bias against darker-skinned females, failing on over one in three women of color—all due to the lack of diversity in training data.

Group attribution bias takes place when data teams extrapolate what is true of individuals to entire groups the individual is or is not part of. This type of AI bias can be found in admission and recruiting tools that may favor the candidates who graduated from certain schools and show prejudice against those who didn’t.

This type of AI bias occurs when AI assumptions are made based on personal experience that doesn’t necessarily apply more generally. For instance, if data scientists have picked up on cultural cues about women being housekeepers, they might struggle to connect women to influential roles in business despite their conscious belief in gender equality—an example echoing the story of Google Images’ gender bias.

Let’s take a look at unfortunate real-life examples of AI bias.

The main step to ensuring fairness is to detect existing bias in AI systems. You will have to systematically scrutinize the algorithms at your company for any biased output. How bias manifests itself depends on your field of operations.

When you employ AI in customer service, you can look at customer satisfaction scores as indications of bias. When people from a certain region consistently receive poor support regardless of their spending habits and product preferences, this is a pointer to proximity bias. If you work in banking, look at loan approvals and credit scoring. If your field is healthcare and you use AI for disease diagnosis, check the accuracy of the diagnosis for patients from different ethnic groups.

Testing your AI systems for bias is a continuous process. As algorithms learn and evolve, they can acquire new forms of bias.

With the growing use of AI in sensitive areas, including finances, criminal justice, and healthcare, we should strive to develop algorithms that are fair to everyone. Businesses, too, have to work on reducing bias in AI systems.

The most apparent reason to hone a corporate debiasing strategy is that a mere idea of an AI algorithm being prejudiced can turn customers away from a product or service a company offers and jeopardize a company’s reputation. Biased decisions can also cause trust issues inside a company. A faulty, biased decision can make the executive board lose trust in management, employees can become less engaged and productive, and partners won’t recommend the company to others. And if the bias persists, it can draw regulators’ attention and lead to litigation.

Another point that could motivate businesses to dedicate themselves to overcoming AI bias is the growing debate about AI regulations. Policymakers in the EU, for example, are starting to develop solutions that could help keep bias in artificial intelligence under control. Certifying AI vendors could be one solution. And along with regulating the inclusiveness of AI algorithms, obtaining an AI certification could help tech enterprises stand out in the saturated marketplaces.

Solving the problem of bias in artificial intelligence requires collaboration between tech industry players, policymakers, and social scientists. And the tech industry has a long way to go before it can eliminate AI bias. Still, there are practical steps companies can take today to make sure the algorithms they develop foster equality and inclusion.

Tech leaders across the globe are taking steps to reduce AI bias. And leveling out the demographics working on AI is one of their priorities. Intel, for example, is working to improve diversity in the company’s technical positions. Recent data shows that women make up 24% of the company’s AI developers, which is 10% higher than the industry average.

Google has also rolled out AI debiasing initiatives, including responsible AI practices featuring advice on making AI algorithms fairer. At the same time, AI4ALL, a nonprofit dedicated to increasing diversity and inclusion in AI education, research, and development, breeds new talent for the AI development sector.

Other industry efforts focus on encouraging assessment and audit to test algorithms’ fairness before AI systems go live and promote legal frameworks and tools that can help tackle AI bias.

Maybe it won’t ever be possible to fully eradicate AI bias due to its complexity. Some experts believe that bias is a socio-technical issue that we can’t resolve by defaulting to technological advancements. Bias can be rooted in our social interactions without us even noticing. And we pass it along to the models that we build and test.

Maybe we will just learn to coexist with bias and control it. In the controlled bias settings, users can specify which discrimination levels they are willing to tolerate, making the model operate in a controlled environment.

Even if fully bias-free AI models are not yet realistic, you can still do your best to maximize AI fairness. Team up with a reliable artificial intelligence development partner like ITRex. We have vast experience in implementing AI in different sectors. Our team will make sure your model and training data are bias-free from the start. We can also organize audits to ensure these models remain fair as they learn and improve.