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AI Explorers 6-8 / Week 07 / Thursday
4/6
Week 07 · Three Kinds of Bias

Thursday

Bias in habits and in heads
// When a fair-looking score hides a gap
⏱ about 20 min

Thursday: Bias in Habits and in Heads

Raven reads the label on the training box: "Snapshots from club camping trips."

"Every card came from our dark-sky trips," she says. "We have never collected a single snapshot from town."

Rocket shrugs. "We always take pictures on trips. That is just how the club does it."

Then he picks up a fuzzy town snapshot. Sky Sorter says "star," and he writes it down without looking twice.

Nova blinks a soft amber. "Two more kinds of bias just walked in," she says.

"One lives in a habit. One lives in how a person reads an answer. Can you name them?"

Systemic bias: in habits and processes

NIST says systemic bias can be in datasets, in an organization's habits and processes, and in the wider society that uses AI.

The club always collects snapshots on dark-sky trips. Nobody planned to leave town skies out. It is simply the habit.

But that habit shapes the dataset. Club members who stargaze from town may be less well served by Sky Sorter.

Human-cognitive bias: in how people read output

NIST says human-cognitive bias is about how people read an AI system's output to decide or fill in missing information.

It also covers how people think about what the system is for.

Rocket accepted "star" without checking. He also assumed Sky Sorter works on any sky, when it was built from dark-sky cards.

NAME THE KIND OF BIAS
  • Read the question.
  • Tap your answer.
The club only ever collects snapshots on trips to dark places. Which kind?
The training set has 18 stars and only 2 comets. Which kind?
Rocket copies Sky Sorter's answer without checking the snapshot. Which kind?
Raven thinks Sky Sorter can sort pictures of birds because it sorts pictures. Which kind?
StatementTrue or false?
Systemic bias can live in a group's everyday habits.?
Human-cognitive bias is only about broken computer code.?
Assuming a tool works on cases it was never built for is a kind of bias.?
If bias was not planned, it does not need fixing.?
WHY THIS EXERCISEBias can come from habits, data or readers, and it still needs to be found and managed.
Rocket's habit of trusting the answer without checking is which kind of bias? Type one word: systemic or human.
WHY THIS EXERCISEHuman-cognitive bias is about how people read and use an AI system's output.
FROM HABIT TO UNFAIR RESULT
  • ?The club always shoots snapshots on dark-sky trips.
  • ?Town snapshots get sorted badly.
  • ?Sky Sorter learns only dark-sky patterns.
  • ?Club members in town are less well served.
  • ?The training set has no town skies.
WHY THIS EXERCISEA habit shaped the data, the data shaped the model, and the model shaped who it served well.
For a grown-up
Ask: can something be unfair even if nobody meant it to be? Share an example from school or work.
Notice together that fixing bias starts with spotting it, not with blaming someone.
Bias that lives in a group's habits is ____ bias.
Bias in how a person reads an answer is human-____ bias.
How many of the 40 training cards came from town skies? Type a number.
Try it
Pick one kind of bias from today.
Write one change the club could make to reduce it, such as a new habit or a checking step.

Thoughtful work. Tomorrow you hunt for bias outside the mission room.

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