...if robots can be biased? (with Ayanna Howard)

The field of robotics has advanced a LOT over the past couple of decades, and part of that has to do with advances in the fields of computer science and artificial intelligence. Algorithms that help robots function and interact with the world are all around us, from the search engines we use to the facial recognition function in our phones.

But these algorithms can have problems. This past September, for example, Twitter users discovered that photo previews, which use machine learning to crop photos to the most interesting part, appeared to favor white faces over Black faces.

We know that humans aren't perfect, but… Do you ever wonder if robots can be biased?

Ayanna Howard (@robotsmarts) is a roboticist, professor, director of the HumAnS Lab, and chair of the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech. She is a leader in the field and has many accomplishments, but one area of her work that caught our eye is her research on how algorithms and robots can be biased.

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