Gender bias in artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) has limitless potential to offer benefits in areas as varied as language processing and medicine.

But as AI uses data created by people as a starting point, it also inherits human flaws such as bias based on age, gender or race. For example, a program will often translate the English term ‘nurse’ using a female-gendered word, and render ‘doctor’ as a male noun. This bias in AI has the potential to widen the gender gap, and even endanger women's lives.

To mark International Women's Day, the General Secretariat of the Council has invited Malvina Nissim, Professor of Computational Linguistics at the University of Groningen, to give a presentation. Professor Nissim, whose research focuses on the interaction between human-made data and machine learning, will talk about how and to what extent human prejudices can be removed from AI.

The Council Library has compiled a Library Guide of resources on gender bias in AI, as well as other publications related to International Women's Day.

This post does not necessarily represent the positions, policies, or opinions of the Council of the European Union or the European Council.

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