Biased

Yet we largely aren’t addressing bias in any meaningful way, and for anyone with a disability, that can be a real problem. Indeed, a Pennsylvania State University study published last year found that trained AI models exhibit significant disability bias. “Models that fail to account for the contextual nuances of disability-related language can lead to unfair censorship and harmful misrepresentations of a marginalized population,” the researchers warned, “exacerbating existing social inequalities.”In practical terms, an…

To give AI-focused women academics and others their well-deserved — and overdue — time in the spotlight, TechCrunch is launching a series of interviews focusing on remarkable women who’ve contributed to the AI revolution. We’ll publish several pieces throughout the year as the AI boom continues, highlighting key work that often goes unrecognized. Read more profiles here. Mutale Nkonde is the founding CEO of the nonprofit AI for the People (AFP), which seeks to increase the amount of Black voices in tech. Before this,…

As a tech journalist, I try to be unbiased and objective when I test and write about technology products, hardware, software, mobile apps, or online services. That’s why the recently-posted Apple Vision Pro "first look"-type review video from Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, which owns Facebook and also makes the Meta Quest 3 mixed-reality headset, makes me laugh! In truth, I didn't laugh. I think the first time I watched the video, my mouth was just open the entire time. It's just really weird! What’s the point? He…

Like millions worldwide, Southeast Asians have been trying out large language models such as Meta's Llama 2 and Mistral AI - but in their native Bahasa Indonesia or Thai. The result has usually been gibberish in English.This leaves them at a disadvantage, tech experts warn, as generative artificial intelligence transforms education, work and governance worldwide. A Singapore government-led initiative aims to correct the imbalance with a Southeast Asian LLM, the first in a family of models named SEA-LION - Southeast Asian…

Developers of artificial intelligence are well aware, and share the concern, that their large language models could perpetuate racial and cultural biases. In response, they have tried to assemble diverse development teams to make sure that training data are drawn from broadly representative sources and to apply debiasing algorithms, and they have created built-in safeguards such as programming that prohibits AI programs such as ChatGPT from engaging in hate speech.I thought I would try an experiment to determine just how…

Some Elon Musk enthusiasts have been alarmed to discover in recent days that Grok, his supposedly “truth-seeking” artificial intelligence was in actual fact a bit of a snowflake.Grok, built by Musk’s xAI artificial intelligence company, was made available to Premium+ X users last Friday. Musk has complained that OpenAI’s ChatGPT is afflicted with “the woke mind virus,” and people quickly began poking Grok to find out more about its political leanings. Some posted screenshots showing Grok giving answers apparently at odds…

Among the barriers European tech has to overcome, gender diversity is undoubtedly a pressing one. The numbers are telling. So far in 2023, female-founded startups have raised less than 2% of the total VC capital in Europe. A new study by global early-stage VC firm Antler shows that, unsurprisingly, female founders have to routinely deal with gender bias. Antler surveyed founders based in Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, and the UK on their recent experience with angels and VCs. All of…

Porcornie’s legal case is still ongoing. In December, the Dutch Institute of Human Rights issued an interim ruling saying it strongly suspected that the software used by VU Amsterdam was discriminatory and giving the university 10 weeks to file its defense. That defense has not yet been made public, but VU Amsterdam has previously argued that Pocornie’s log data—showing how long she took to log into her exam and how many times she had to restart the software—imply her problems were due to an unstable internet connection,…

Last week, I published a story about new tools developed by researchers at AI startup Hugging Face and the University of Leipzig that let people see for themselves what kinds of inherent biases AI models have about different genders and ethnicities.  Although I’ve written a lot about how our biases are reflected in AI models, it still felt jarring to see exactly how pale, male, and stale the humans of AI are. That was particularly true for DALL-E 2, which generates white men 97% of the time when given prompts like “CEO”…

What’s coming: Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are about to lock horns once again. Last month, the US Federal Communications Commission approved the final aspects of Project Kuiper, Amazon’s effort to deliver high-speed internet access from space. In May, the company will test its satellites in an effort to take on SpaceX’s own venture, Starlink, and tap into a potentially very lucrative market. The catch: The key difference is that Starlink is operational, and has been for years, whereas Amazon doesn’t plan to start offering…