"Google's sexist algorithms offer an important lesson in diversity"

"Stories like this aren’t just fodder to titillate your friends on Facebook (governed by its own algorithms), but should drive home two important lessons. The first is that as our machines get smarter and we trust them to do more of our thinking, diversity in tech becomes more important. The reason these algorithms make these mistakes isn’t necessarily malicious, it’s because they reflect the biases of those that programmed them. For example, if you train facial recognition software using photos from your employees and have few black employees, then your software won’t recognize African-Americans as well.

When you built software to show certain people job listings, there are any number of ways biases can creep in, from an assumption that men are more interested in C-level jobs to looking at salary range and eliminating women for some jobs because they are historically paid less...

For now, public shame may be enough, but that’s likely only in cases of hot button issues around racism and sexism. Other problematic algorithms around class discrimination or labeling drug addicts by their search terms will be tougher to draw attention to. But they are just as harmful."
http://fortune.com/2015/07/08/googles-sexist-algorithms/

So important.