Researchers at Two American Varsities Develop AI–based Gender Discrimination Detection Tool

A new breakthrough by American varsity researchers will allow people to prevent race or gender discrimination. An AI-based tool that is programmed to identify such discrimination was built by the researchers from Pennsylvania State and Columbia Universities.

In order to test the tool, the researchers used it to determine whether there is gender-based discrimination in salaries. The test was conducted on income data provided by the US Census Bureau.

The tool was also tested by carrying out an experiment on the data provided by the New York City Police Department in order to identify discrimination against people of different skin colors who were previously arrested.

One of the professors at Pennsylvania StateUniversity said that if the data is biased then they can change the recommendations of the AI system.

For instance, if a woman is never hired by a particular company till date, then an AI system trained on the historical data will not recommend a woman for any new openings in the company.

“We also found evidence of gender-based discrimination in salary. Specifically, we found that the odds of a woman having a salary greater than $50,000 per year is only one-third that for a man. This would suggest that employers should look for and correct, when appropriate, gender bias in salaries,” explained VasantHonavar.

Mr. Honavar is a Professor at Pennsylvania State University.