AI innovation increases inequality

Various forms of AI bias are detrimental too. Speaking to the New York Times, Princeton computer science professor Olga Russakovsky said AI bias goes well beyond gender and race. In addition to data and algorithmic bias (the latter of which can "amplify" the former), AI is developed by humans - and humans are inherently biased.

"A.I. researchers are primarily people who are male, who come from certain racial demographics, who grew up in high socioeconomic areas, primarily people without disabilities," Russakovsky said. "We're a fairly homogeneous population, so it's a challenge to think broadly about world issues."

The limited experiences of AI creators may explain why speech-recognition AI often fails to understand certain dialects and accents, or why companies fail to consider the consequences of a chatbot impersonating notorious figures in human history. Developers and businesses should exercise greater care to avoid recreating powerful biases and prejudices that put minority populations at risk.

7. Socioeconomic Inequality as a Result of AI

If companies refuse to acknowledge the inherent biases baked into AI algorithms, they may compromise their DEI initiatives through AI-powered recruiting. The idea that AI can measure the traits of a candidate through facial and voice analyses is still tainted by racial biases, reproducing the same discriminatory hiring practices businesses claim to be eliminating.

Widening socioeconomic inequality sparked by AI-driven job loss is another cause for concern, revealing the class biases of how AI is applied. Workers who perform more manual, repetitive tasks have experienced wage declines as high as 70 percent because of automation, with office and desk workers remaining largely untouched in AI's early stages. However, the increase in generative AI use is already affecting office jobs, making for a wide range of roles that may be more vulnerable to wage or job loss than others.