The other day I came across this story from 2015 where an algorithm created by Google for a photo recognition app tagged two black people as "gorillas". It then led me to think is it possible for algorithms to be racist? Surely not, they're just computers?
A Harvard professor found evidence to suggest possible racism in algorithms as they found that ads about arrest records were much more likely to appear alongside searches for names thought to belong to a black person versus a white person. 🤔
So why did this happen? Is it down to user feedback or the brains behind the algorithm?
In my opinion I think that algorithms aren't racist but are just following the code they have been programmed to. As computers get smarter they are expected to take on more tasks a human would normally do. They are changing in real time, writing their own rules on the basis of data and input. We need to remember that they don't have brains like you and I and can't think for themselves. It's going to take time to be able to perfect these algorithms and as of yet they it seems they haven't grasped sensitivity.
