Gender-neutral internet searches yield results that nonetheless produce male-dominated output, according to a new study.

These search results have an effect on users by promoting gender bias and potentially influencing hiring decisions, the researchers report.

The work, which appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is among the latest to uncover how artificial intelligence (AI) can alter our perceptions and actions.

“There is increasing concern that algorithms used by modern AI systems produce discriminatory outputs, presumably because they are trained on data in which societal biases are embedded,” says Madalina Vlasceanu, a postdoctoral fellow in New York University’s psychology department and the paper’s lead author.

“These findings call for a model of ethical AI that combines human psychology with computational and sociological approaches to illuminate the formation, operation, and mitigation of algorithmic bias,” says author David Amodio, a professor in NYU’s psychology department and the University of Amsterdam.

Technology experts have expressed concern that algorithms used by modern AI systems produce discriminatory outputs, presumably because they are trained on data in which societal biases are ingrained.

“Certain 1950s ideas about gender are actually still embedded in our database systems,” Meredith Broussard, author of Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World (MIT Press, 2018) and a professor at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, told the Markup earlier this year.

The use of AI by human decision makers may result in the propagation, rather than reduction, of existing disparities, Vlasceanu and Amodio say.

Read the full article about search engine gender bias by James Devitt at Futurity.