Hadi Hoteit

Are Algorithms Discriminatory?

Discrimination against large groups of people based on their ethnicity, religion, or

gender identity has a long and tragic history. Discrimination against women, which affects half

of the world's populace, is a well-known and pervasive form of inequality. Women's access and

participation in all areas of society and the economy, including education, employment, the arts,

and research, have historically been limited. And even when women and girls achieved success,

their accomplishments were not recognized on the same level as men as the case of Ada

Lovelace where she developed the first program on a prototype of a digital computer built by an

English mathematician known as Charles Baggage (The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica,

2018). Due to a lack of female leadership and preferential treatment for men, the data,

information, and records created by our societies are biased against women.

An

Image from LookFar algorithm trained on information about

occupations and employment patterns may steer male applicants toward engineering roles while
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steering female applicants toward caretaking positions if used by companies to make

personalized recommendations to job seekers (Salih, 2022). This is because women have

traditionally occupied a disproportionate number of these posts throughout history, and neither

the data nor the algorithm gives any credence to the idea that this bias may be the result of

ingrained biases based on gender. Since the algorithm would essentially be perpetuating and

potentially amplifying preexisting biases against women. Thereby, discrimination on media

based on gender deserves to be talked about.

Computational issues are further bothersome in the realm of artificial intelligence,

machine learning, and algorithms, the vast majority of people working in these sectors still

today, as well as commonly in Information Technology jobs are males; and this is much more

obvious for top and decision-taking professions. This implies a lot of artificial intelligence

programs and algorithms have been developed and analyzed by males (Feldman, 2019). For that

reason, it may be harder to counteract preexisting biases that discriminate against women.
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Due to this imbalance of people working in these sectors, we could see several negative

outcomes on Google’s software. According to Salih (2022), When converting gender-neutral

English terminology for jobs, such as "doctor,"

into foreign gendered words, such as Spanish, the

program consistently produced the masculine

equivalents. This sexism was also visible in the

translation of English terms like "nurse" and

"beautiful," which were rendered into their

feminine equivalents in other languages. Google Translate previously only offered one form of

"doctor" and one version of "nurse," but this prejudice appears to have been remedied as both

options are now offered when translating from English to Spanish.

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Undoubtedly, bias related to gender is the most noticeable kind of predisposition in the

AI field. Algorithms may emphasize people’s bigoted biases inherent in the way mankind

functions and the data we've collected from human actions that include text, voice, and images.

As a result, gender-transformative practices, notably availability to high-ranking positions,

should be fostered in the media sector. To evaluate sector development, assessment and

surveillance systems must be established. Thus, achieving gender equal content generation such

as the case of google translate.

References
The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica. (2018). Ada Lovelace | Biography & Facts. In

Encyclopædia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ada-Lovelace

Feldman, S. (2019, February 11). Infographic: Steady Rise for Women in STEM but Gender Gap

Remains. Statista Infographics; Statista. https://www.statista.com/chart/16970/women-

stem/

Salih, N. (2022, March 14). Gender discrimination in the algorithmic field: a look at the

algorithms in the OASI Register. Eticas Foundation. https://eticasfoundation.org/gender-

discrimination-in-the-algorithmic-field-a-look-at-the-algorithms-in-the-oasi-register/
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