What Are Algorithms and Are They Biased Against Me?

Every minute, machines are shaping somebody’s future, as software decides which hospital patients should get extra monitoring or which credit card applicants get a thumbs-down. The hope was that programs combining objective criteria and mountains of data could be more efficient than humans while sidestepping their subjectivity and bias. It hasn’t worked out that way. Instead, the hospital program was found to underestimate the needs of Black patients, and the credit card software is being investigated after complaints that it discriminated against women. Algorithms, the logic at the heart of such programs, can replicate and even amplify the prejudices of those who create them.

A formula for processing information or performing a task. Arranging names in alphabetical order is a kind of algorithm; so is a recipe for making chocolate chip cookies. But they’re usually far more complicated. Companies such as Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google have spent billions of dollars developing the algorithms they use to sort through oceans of information and zealously guard the secrets of their software. And as artificial intelligence makes these formulas ever more complex, in many cases it’s impossible to know how decisions are being reached. A prominent AI researcher at Google was recently fired after she resisted the company’s calls to retract a research paper that pointed out concerns about the technology the company uses.