Week 3 - Bias in Computer Systems

Although this article is fairly outdated, I think that much of what Friedman and Nissenbaum had to say about bias in computer systems still holds true today. This article has increased my awareness of the many different types of bias that can exist in systems, which I alone would have been unable to recognize. I find the example regarding flight reservation systems to be quite interesting. Although many people don’t visit travel agencies anymore, people do rely on reservation systems, such as Travelocity, Expedia, or Hotwire, to book flights, hotel rooms, rental cars, cruises etc. While I anticipate that some kind of bias is still present in these systems today, I do wonder to what degree this bias still exists. Is there still deliberate bias in these systems or is the bias accidental and perhaps due to technological limitations? Furthermore, a point raised in today’s class, which I found intriguing is the possibility of even the system designers themselves being unaware of preexisting bias due to many new systems being developed from previous, older codes or platforms.         

References

Friedman, Batya and Nissenbaum, Helen (1996). Bias in computer systems. ACM Transactions on Information Systems 14(3): 330–347.

- Alicja