Amazon decided to shut down its experimental artificial intelligence (AI) recruiting tool after discovering it discriminated against women. The company created the tool to trawl the web and spot potential candidates, rating them from one to five stars. But the algorithm learned to systematically downgrade women’s CV’s for technical jobs such as software developer.
Although Amazon is at the forefront of AI technology, the company couldn’t find a way to make its algorithm gender-neutral. But the company’s failure reminds us that AI develops bias from a variety of sources. While there’s a common belief that