Popcorn Hacks
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Think of a real-world example where a computer system has shown bias. It could be something you’ve read about, experienced, or imagined. Describe the biased system, explain what type of bias it represents (Pre-existing Social Bias, Technical Bias, or Emergent Social Bias), and suggest one way to reduce or fix the bias.
- Technical bias is present within voice assistants like Siri or Alexa. These bots are usually trained on people with “neutral” accents and can struggle to understand people who speak a certain way, like language learners or people who lisp. One way to reduce this bias is expose the voice assistants to people with voice differences and increase their accuracy.
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Bias in computing can lead to unfair outcomes, but there are ways to reduce it. In the financial industry, an AI system used to approve loan applications unintentionally favors male applicants over female applicants because it was trained on past loan approval data, which reflected gender biases. This is an example of Pre-existing Social Bias. Give two ways to mitigate this bias and make the system more fair.
- One method is to implement human intervention that looks over the AI’s choices and ensures that there is not an unfair proportion of women being denied. Another solution is to specifically train the model on data that includes women getting accepted for loans so that the AI learns to change its behavior.
Homework Hack: Understanding Bias in Computing
Think of a system or tool that you use every day—this could be a website, app, or device. Can you identify any bias that might exist in the way the system works?
Task:
- Describe the system you’re thinking of.
- Identify the bias in that system and explain why it might be biased. (Is it Pre-existing Social Bias, Technical Bias, or Emergent Social Bias?)
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Propose one way to reduce or fix the bias in that system.
- I use Instagram most days to keep up with friends and family, stay informed, and be entertained. Instagram tends to recommend me the same types of posts because it is trained on the past data I have provided it. This is an Algorithmic Bias. To see a greater variety of posts, I can look at the videos that people I follow have liked and also follow new people who make content different than what I am used to in order to retrain Instagram’s algorithm.