Amazon scraps computer program for being sexist

[Bilge_Rat]

too delicious, ironic or funny not to post.

Amazon scraps AI for bias against women, raises more doubts about objectivity of algorithms

According to a new report today from Reuters, the Seattle tech giant was forced to scrap an AI recruiting engine after the company came to realize that the algorithm was excluding women.

The in-house technology was supposed to crawl the Web and identify candidates that the fast-expanding firm might hire for a variety of software development and technical jobs. But within months of its 2014 deployment, Amazon executives realized that it wasn't functioning as intended.

Using data from a decade's worth of resumes, the engine was designed to scan employment and academic histories using recognized patterns from other high achievers, and some 50,000 keywords. But because the vast majority of the CVs came from men, it taught itself that male candidates were preferable, rejecting words like "women's" as well as graduates from all-female colleges.

Amazon tried to correct the fault, but eventually lost faith in the system, coming to fear that it would simply come up with other ways to discriminate.

The program was abandoned last year, and now the company is trying to build another, more diverse one from scratch.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/thenational/...tien-1.4855190