Microsoft is Building an AI Bias Detector

Microsoft is building an ‘oracle’ that will work to identify bias in others’ AI algorithms.

Concerns about algorithmic bias are becoming more widespread as AI is deployed in more and more domains.

Facebook has recently announced its own initiatives to combat bias on its platform after coming under fire for suppressing conservative politics.

“Things like transparency, intelligibility, and explanation are new enough to the field that few of us have sufficient experience to know everything we should look for and all the ways that bias might lurk in our models,” Rich Caruna, a senior researcher at Microsoft, told Technology Review.

“Of course, we can’t expect perfection—there’s always going to be some bias undetected or that can’t be eliminated—the goal is to do as well as we can.”

“The most important thing companies can do right now is educate their workforce so that they’re aware of the myriad ways in which bias can arise and manifest itself and create tools to make models easier to understand and bias easier to detect.”

Earlier this month, Match announced the rollout of its AI dating assistant ‘Lara’ on Google Assistant.

The AI will offer users tips about dating and venue suggestions for dates, as well as one select match per day.

In April, a group of EU scientists raised concerns that Europe was falling behind in AI technology. They called for the development of an EU AI hub.

Read more about Microsoft’s bias detection here.