In the month of cultural diversity, we comment on the influence of Artificial Intelligence.
By Abril Neiman
The 12th of October is historically recognized as the day of race. Today, however, it is known by a name more appropriate:
We commemorate the Day of Respect for Cultural Diversity, because society, as a whole, need to recognize and appreciate the different cultures that enrich our world.
However, it is well known that discrimination is the opposite of diversity and, unfortunately, discrimination exists in many areas of life, including, as a consequence, the Artificial Intelligence (from now on, AI).
AI is an ever-growing and evolving phenomenon that seeks to bring computer systems up to the level of human reasoning. AI does not replicate all human reasoning, but mainly the thinking of those who develop the system. And this is where we can see the discrimination in AI, as it is mainly based on data and information that exists in the real world, provided by certain groups of people.
We asked in the GPT chat, for clarification purposes, how can AI be linked to discrimination, and the response pointed out the different ways in which AI discriminates, including examples!
It is paradoxical that the very source of information, questioned on this issue, is the same source that provides the explanation: this occurs because the AI is fed by human data, and therefore the AI will discriminate (or not) to the same extent that we, humans, do.
We need to be very careful about the data we feed into new technologies if we do not want to introduce bias. This can happen if the data used to build a particular system has been reduced to values that represent a small part of the population, excluding diverse communities. This clearly limits the recognition of cultural diversity.
Although there have not yet been any legal claims against AI in this regard –at least to our knowledge– it is important to mention that there are regulations to prevent discrimination: The official website of the Argentine Republic www.argentina.gob.ar mentions that it is essential to respect the United Nations Organization (UN) Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, which states that “Artificial Intelligence players should promote diversity and inclusion, ensure social justice, protect equality and combat all forms of discrimination, in accordance with international law. AI players should make every reasonable effort to minimize and avoid reinforcing or perpetuating discriminatory or biased applications and outcomes throughout the lifecycle of AI systems, in order to ensure the fairness of such systems.”
AI is a great technological advance that we can be proud of, but we must be careful on how we use these systems so as not to contribute to discrimination, which we claim to be fighting against. We must not provide data that can lead to algorithmic biases, as they generate prejudices and stereotypes, as well as homogeneous culturalization.
AI is undoubtedly a very useful tool, but it is important to prevent this problem so that human mistakes are not repeated:
If the data we provide as humans is inclusive and broad, then so will AI.
The above is a kind of technological tribute to the month of cultural diversity.
For further information please contact aneiman@ojambf.com
