Rarely a week goes by without Toronto tech worker Karthik Ramakrishnan seeing another example of artificial intelligence gone wrong.

Systems programmed with the technology have led to a French medical chatbot suggesting someone commit suicide, another created by Microsoft tweeting a 9/11 conspiracy theory and an Amazon.com Inc. recruiting tool downgrading resumes with references to women.

But Ramakrishnan is convinced this pattern can be eased and many of the problemsstemming from AI — machine-based technologies that learn from data — can be prevented.

That’s why he, Dan Adamson and Rahm Hafiz co-founded Armilla AI, which launched Thursday with $1.5 million in financial backing from investors including AI godfather Yoshua Bengio and Two Small Fish Ventures, a fund run by Wattpad’s Alan and Eva Lau.

Source: Toronto Daily Star

Date: October 22nd, 2021

Link: https://www.thestar.com/business/2021/10/21/new-toronto-company-can-alert-firms-to-unintended-consequences-in-their-ai.html

Discussion

1. What is it about AI that means it can get to a place where ” the technology ha[s] led to a French medical chatbot suggesting someone commit suicide “?
2. ” a situation where an AI system for detecting cancerous skin lesions was less likely to pick up cancers in dark-skinned people because it had been developed from a database comprised of mostly light-skinned populations. ” How can this be fixed?