Unfair and Illegal Discrimination

There is much debate about the ways in which artificial intelligence (AI) systems can include and perpetuate biases and lead to unfair and often illegal discrimination against individuals on the basis of protected characteristics, such as age, race, gender and disability. This chapter describes three cases of such discrimination. It starts with an account of the use of AI in hiring decisions that led to discrimination based on gender. The second case explores the way in which AI can lead to discrimination when applied in law enforcement. The final example looks at implications of bias in the detection of skin colour. The chapter then discusses why these cases are considered to be ethical issues and how this ethics debate relates to well-established legislation around discrimination. The chapter proposes two ways of raising awareness of possible discriminatory characteristics of AI systems and ways of dealing with them: AI impact assessments and ethics by design.