This work shows how easily bias can form from basic cognitive principles, giving us a powerful new model to study the roots of discrimination.

Collaboration with my colleagues at DeepMind, and with Suzanne Sadedin and Wil Cunningham.
pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

🔬 Finding #2: We distrust what we don't know.
Even without pre-programmed prejudice, when agents interacted more with their "own kind," they began to discriminate.
They learned to spot good/bad actors in their own group but saw the "other" group as one big, unknown risk.

🔬 Finding #1: Bias is a mental shortcut.
AI agents learned to take the "easy path." Instead of judging individuals on their actions, they used group identity as proxy for trustworthiness because it was faster.
The good news? An unbiased tool, like a reputation system, fixed it.

The cruelty is the point, as @adamserwer.bsky.social
wrote in 2018

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

@sharky6000.bsky.social needs a peer into the future from the oracle! 😁

Ah, but that is a completely different question. For your original question I was assuming you meant "for humans", in which case it's probably true... There's only one fundamental way to express algorithms and systems, and all instantiations (prog langs) are isomorphic. But for aliens, likely not!

I really have no clue what is your point here. Sure, people in any field can be atrociously biased, wrong, or even malicious. We set up processes to achieve improvements of understanding _despite_ human biases. What's the alternative? What are you criticising, and what's better?

Huh? That's just not true. You might argue hubris is dangerous and can lead one to commit logical fallacies, sure. But that would be like saying to a medical doctor: "thinking you are systematically diagnosing is proof you are bad at it." Wtf?

Puzzling that you state "as an epidemiologist" but then hedge saying this is your personal opinion... Why an appeal of expertise with a vague message that sounds antivax? COVID might not be the worst disease, but there's evidence of long term lung damage with reinfections. You can be unconcerned

One of my favourite wiki pages: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...