#MinoritiesInEngineering MinoritiesInTech Robots AI MachineLearning

[kenn15]

Robots can be “Racist”

We are currently in the time of technology. New technologies and ideas are being created everyday to supposedly make life easier for humans. Artificial Intelligence is one of those hot topics in technology right now. AI is an area of computer science that focuses on creating machines that perform and interact like humans. The downfall to AI is that machines learn from humans and humans can be racist, sexist, prejudice, and many more unattractive characteristics. Robots are being programmed to learn human language abilities, but they are also learning the biases within the patterns of language fed to them by human engineers. An example of Robots racial profiling is a 2017 video of a Facebook employee’s failed attempt to use an automatic soap dispenser because the dispenser could not detect his dark-skinned hand. The video began with a white man using the soap dispenser and soap immediately coming out. Then, the video showed the employee using the same soap dispenser and nothing came out for him. This is a very dangerous issue the technology industry and for minorities. This issue is also apart of my reason for encouraging other minorities to pursue careers in technology. In order to protect minorities, minorities must make the technologies and inventions people use on an everyday basis.

“Robots have been racist and sexist for as long as the people who created them have been racist and sexist, because machines can work only from the information given to them, usually by the white, straight men who dominate the fields of technology and robotics. “

-Laurie Penny

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/20/robots-racist-sexist-people-machines-ai-language