Artificial Intelligence: it's all in the coding or is it ?

Sample 1 - AI created avatar - female

Sample 2 -AI created avatar - male

 

Considerable public debate has ensued on the positives and negatives (aka benefits versus risks) of Artificial Intelligence [AI]. The capability of the new systems cannot be fully quantified at this time however there are simple tests to demonstrate how such systems can interpret commands provided to them by users. On even a very simple, superficial level, AI can produce dramatically different results for the same question or request by a user.

The test above is one such example. A well known AI programme was tasked by a user to create an avatar image to assist the user to interact with the AI programme. The request was very basic without any significant details as to what image should be developed other than one should be female and one should be male with a positive expression. The AI program produced sample 1 for the female image and sample 2 for the male image. Is there an bias inherent within the AI programme ? That is hard to prove however the two images created could not be more different. Sample 1 is a very humanistic female image with a pleasant interactive professional expression. Sample 2 is an abstract almost idiotic impression of a non gender entity yet the instructions for each sample, female and male were identical and made at the same time.