Artificial Intelligence and Software Testing

3 QUALITY AND BIAS

James Harold Davenport

It is common to accuse systems, particularly AI systems or systems incorporating AI, of being ‘biased’ or ‘unfair’. These two words are often used synonymously, but we will follow the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) paradigm and distinguish between them – ‘bias’ being a statistical phenomenon, capable of precise definition, and ‘fairness’ an ethics one, whose interpretation depends on, for example, ‘established norms’, and hence perceptions of fairness can vary. More precisely, we adopt the following based on work under way in ISO/IEC SC 42, one of the standards development organisations examining the issue:

‘Bias’ is a systematic difference in treatment of certain objects, ...