Machine Bias : a survey of issues

Farič, Ana (author), Bratko, Ivan (author)

Some recent applications of Artificial Intelligence, particularly machine learning, have been strongly criticised in general media and professional literature. Applications in domains of justice, employment and banking are often mentioned in this respect. The main critic is that these applications are biased with respect to so called protected attributes, such as race, gender and age. The most notorious example is the system COMPAS which is still in use in the American justice system despite severe criticism. The aim of our paper is to analyse the trends of discussion about bias in machine learning algorithms using the COMPAS as an example. The main problem we observed is that even in the field of AI, there is no generally agreed upon definition of bias which would enable operational use in preventing bias. Our conclusions are that (1) improved general education concerning AI is needed to enable better understanding of AI methods in everyday applications, and (2) better technical methods must be developed for reliably implementing generally accepted societal values such as equality and fairness in AI systems.

• Language: English
• Keywords: machine learning, artificial intelligence, bias, fairness, discrimination, COMPAS
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FRI - Faculty of Computer and Information Science
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2024
• Number of pages: Str. 205-212
• Numbering: Vol. 48, no. 2
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-167857
• UDC: 004.85
• ISSN on article: 0350-5596
• DOI: 10.31449/inf.v48i2.5971
• COBISS.SI-ID: 229142787
• Publication date in RUL: 17.03.2025

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Informatica : an international journal of computing and informatics
• Shortened title: Informatica
• Publisher: Slovene Society Informatika
• ISSN: 0350-5596
• COBISS.SI-ID: 746244

Licences

• License: CC BY 3.0, Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported
• Link: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en
• Description: You are free to reproduce and redistribute the material in any medium or format. You are free to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially. You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: strojno učenje, umetna inteligenca, pristranskost, pravičnost, diskriminacija, COMPAS

Projects

• Funder: ARIS - Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency
• Project number: V2-2272
• Name: Opredelitev okvira za zagotavljanje zaupanja javnosti v sisteme umetne inteligence in njihove uporabe