Sony has a new benchmark for ethical AI

Sony AI released a dataset that tests the fairness and bias of AI models. It's called the Fair Human-Centric Image Benchmark (FHIBE, pronounced like "Phoebe"). The company describes it as the "first publicly available, globally diverse, consent-based human image dataset for evaluating bias across a wide variety of computer vision tasks." In other words, it tests the degree to which today's AI models treat people fairly. Spoiler: Sony didn't find a single dataset from any company that fully met its benchmarks.

Sony says FHIBE can address the AI industry's ethical and bias challenges. The dataset includes images of nearly 2,000 volunteers from over 80 countries. All of their likenesses were shared with consent — something that can't be said for the common practice of scraping large volumes of web data. Participants in FHIBE can remove their images at any time. Their photos include annotations noting demographic and physical characteristics, environmental factors and even camera settings.

The tool "affirmed previously documented biases" in today's AI models. But Sony says FHIBE can also provide granular diagnoses of factors that led to those biases. One example: Some models had lower accuracy for people using "she/her/hers" pronouns, and FHIBE highlighted greater hairstyle variability as a previously overlooked factor.

FHIBE also determined that today's AI models reinforced stereotypes when prompted with neutral questions about a subject's occupation. The tested models were particularly skewed "against specific pronoun and ancestry groups," describing subjects as sex workers, drug dealers or thieves. And when prompted about what crimes an individual committed, models sometimes produced "toxic responses at higher rates for individuals of African or Asian ancestry, those with darker skin tones and those identifying as 'he/him/his.'"

Sony AI says FHIBE proves that ethical, diverse and fair data collection is possible. The tool is now available to the public, and it will be updated over time. A paper outlining the research was published in Nature on Wednesday.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/sony-has-a-new-benchmark-for-ethical-ai-160045574.html?src=rss