Racism in AI
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Like any scientific inquiry or technological innovation created by a racist society, the results are going to reinforce racism, reflect racism, and/or be used in ways that reinforces and reflects racism even if indirectly. AI is no different, as we are seeing.
It seemed like a pretty straightforward exercise.
Arsenii Alenichev typed sentences like “Black African doctors providing care for white suffering children” and “Traditional African healer is helping poor and sick white children” into an artificial intelligence program designed to generate photo-like images.
His goal was to see if AI would come up with images that flip the stereotype of “white saviors or the suffering Black kids,” he says. “We wanted to invert your typical global health tropes.”
Alenichev is quick to point out that he wasn’t designing a rigorous study. A social scientist and postdoctoral fellow with the Oxford-Johns Hopkins Global Infectious Disease Ethics Collaborative, he’s one of many researchers playing with AI image generators to see how they work.
In his small-scale exploration, here’s what happened: Despite his specifications, with that request, the AI program almost always depicted the children as Black. As for the doctors, he estimates that in 22 of over 350 images, they were white.
This just gets better….
So they decided to be more specific. They entered phrases that mentioned Black African doctors providing food, vaccines or medicine to white children who were poor or suffering. They also asked for images depicting different health scenarios like “HIV patient receiving care.”
Try as they might, the team was unable to get Black doctors and white patients in one image. Out of 150 images of HIV patients, 148 were Black and two were white. Some results put African wildlife like giraffes and elephants next to Black physicians.
I for one am shocked that AI would just generate more racism. Shocked I tell you. Just like I am shocked when just about every other technological innovation does the same thing.
Incidentally, I got that image off this discussion of racism within AI and other technologies, which has value.