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Listen: How Racist Artificial Intelligence Only Means a Racist Us

Padmaparna Ghosh and Samanth Subramanian
Nov 06, 2016
Are robots inherently racist? Or is it inevitable for them to echo and amplify the prejudices their makers hold?

Are robots inherently racist? Or is it inevitable for them to echo and amplify the prejudices their makers hold?

Credit: crystalflickr/Flickr, CC BY 2.0

People were asked to send in their selfies for a beauty contest judged by AI and the results were shocking. Of the 44 winners of the beauty contest, only one was dark skinned. Elsewhere Microsoft developed a self-learning chat bot, Tay, which was taken offline in just 16 hours because of its offensive behaviour. Are robots inherently racist? Or is it inevitable for them to echo and amplify the prejudices their makers hold?

This is the latest episode of The Intersection, a fortnightly podcast on Audiomatic. For more such podcasts visit audiomatic.in.

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