Children’s awareness of algorithmic biases

[Dr. Motahhare Eslami] And the goal was to understand can really kids or youth know about these biases. So what we did was we showed them some results of algorithmic-curated content and we asked them if they are fair. And we intentionally had some nuanced biases. For example, this is a search if you search for “wedding,” and if you look at this, this is particularly western. This is all heterosexual couples. There’s not much interracial marriage here. And the kids really noticed also, they were really good. They were like, “only young people, white marrying white, black marrying black, there’s no gay and lesbian.”So they are really better than maybe we think they are. And then we also talked about what does a “fair” algorithmic system means? For example, this is a search for a computer programmer. They talked about, “Oh, there are more men in computer programming.” Does it mean that the algorithmic search results should show that or should it inspire an ideal world? So they are knowing about these nuanced contemplations.