CIO Dive Features Opinion Piece by Charla Griffy-Brown on Data Bias

Charla Griffy-Brown, professor of information systems and technology management, recently wrote an opinion piece for CIO Dive on the importance of diversity in technology decision-making and design. Today, artificial intelligence (AI) hold tremendous potential to positively impact virtually every segment of society. Yet, AI can also have a dark side if the humans programing the machine use bias data. Charla stresses the importance of ensuring AI machines and other self-learning systems have data that includes the diversity that is woven into our society.

Google just announced the purchase of fitness tracker Fitbit as part of its foray into an AI-driven health and wellness platform. Charla points to the potential data bias that exist with Fitbit’s data. For example, Fitbit purchasers are overwhelmingly female, between the age of 35-44 and with household incomes over $100,000. Executives should not ignore the potential bias related to a niche, homogeneous dataset, and this distorted data should not be used for business initiatives related to health and wellness initiatives. Read more.