2 ms·

> Is it actually true that AI is biased? Surely, an AI cannot "be biased", it just looks at the input data and outputs it's own. This is not bias. By that logi

by tivert 3y ago

> Is it actually true that AI is biased? Surely, an AI cannot "be biased", it just looks at the input data and outputs it's own. This is not bias. By that logic, nothing is biased. That racist cop? Just looking at her input data and outputting her own. (I'm ignoring the OP article, which I haven't read.)

EGreg 3y ago
Major question: What’s the difference between bias and knowledge? Science changes etc
anonporridge 3y ago
No, that doesn't follow at all. Bias is structural ignorance of input data that contradicts with an entity's ideology that they want to protect. A racist cop who came to the job with an internalized ideology that black people are bad and executes on that ideology despite experience and data to the contrary is biased. But a cop whose lived experience on the job is that (at least within their jurisdiction) black people are more likely to commit crimes and be violent, and therefore warrant a higher degree of wariness isn't biased, but operating rationally based on their input data. If that rational conclusion morphs into racist ideology that is inflexible to change given new input data, then it becomes bias. It's also possible they misinterpreted the input data and keyed in on race rather than poverty as the root cause, but that also isn't necessarily bias, just bad processing or incomplete input data. The process of science is the attempt to follow the input data to the conclusion without letting theoretical ideologies bias us away from discovering unknown truths.
- itishappy 3y ago
  I disagree. I think you can be both rational and biased by operating with incomplete information. Potentially less polarizing: Aristotle when developing his theories of violent vs natural motion. I would not call him unbiased for theorizing without looking outside. You can't claim to be unbiased from just individual experiences, you need to attempt to understand the whole picture.

by tivert 3y ago

EGreg 3y ago

Major question: What’s the difference between bias and knowledge? Science changes etc

anonporridge 3y ago

No, that doesn't follow at all. Bias is structural ignorance of input data that contradicts with an entity's ideology that they want to protect. A racist cop who came to the job with an internalized ideology that black people are bad and executes on that ideology despite experience and data to the contrary is biased. But a cop whose lived experience on the job is that (at least within their jurisdiction) black people are more likely to commit crimes and be violent, and therefore warrant a higher degree of wariness isn't biased, but operating rationally based on their input data. If that rational conclusion morphs into racist ideology that is inflexible to change given new input data, then it becomes bias. It's also possible they misinterpreted the input data and keyed in on race rather than poverty as the root cause, but that also isn't necessarily bias, just bad processing or incomplete input data. The process of science is the attempt to follow the input data to the conclusion without letting theoretical ideologies bias us away from discovering unknown truths.

itishappy 3y ago
I disagree. I think you can be both rational and biased by operating with incomplete information. Potentially less polarizing: Aristotle when developing his theories of violent vs natural motion. I would not call him unbiased for theorizing without looking outside. You can't claim to be unbiased from just individual experiences, you need to attempt to understand the whole picture.