There was a movement when I was in college toward becoming “colorblind.” The colorblind movement was based on a belief that said if we didn’t see the color of a person’s skin, we would judge them on their merits. That hypothesis has since proven false. It’s actually shown to engender biases against people of color.
We see a similar trend playing out with gender and meritocracies. By becoming gender blind and focusing on meritocracies or hiring the best talent, we wind up perpetuating bias against women. We are even finding a comparable pattern in AI when we are blind to the biases inherent in the data sets used.
But what if we flipped the script, and instead of AI being blind to bias, AI was aware of bias and recognized it as such?
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, said, “AI is probably the most important thing humanity has ever worked on. I think of it as something more profound than electricity or fire.” I agree.