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Algorithms and Artificial Intelligence Agents Influence Many Areas of Life Today

• In particular, these artificial agents influence the news articles read and associated advertising, access to credit and capital investment, risk assessments for convicts, and others.

This Reliance on Artificial Agents Carries Risks that Have Caused Concern

• The potential for bias is one concern. Algorithms give the illusion of being unbiased but are written by people and trained on socially generated data. So they can encode and amplify human biases. Use of artificial agents in sentencing and other legal contexts is one area in particular that has caused concerns about bias.
• Another concern is that increasing reliance on artificial agents is fueling the rapid automation of jobs, even jobs that would seem to rely heavily on human intelligence, such as journalism and radiology.
• Among other risks are the possibility of hacked reward functions (an issue with machine learning) and the inability to distinguish among cultural differences.

Remedies Will Most Likely Require a Combination of Technical and Nontechnical Approaches

• Reliance on algorithms for autonomous decisionmaking requires equipping them with means of auditing the causal factors behind decisions.
• Algorithms can lead to inequitable outcomes. Instilling a healthy dose of informed skepticism in the public would help reduce the effects of automation bias.
• Training and diversity in the ranks of algorithm developers could help improve sensitivity to potential disparate impact problems.