Facebook will study whether its algorithms are racially biased

Facebook is forming new internal teams dedicated to studying its main social network and Instagram for racial bias, in particular for whether its algorithms trained using artificial intelligence adversely affect Black, Hispanic, and other underrepresented groups. The team will be “tasked with ensuring fairness and equitable product development are present in everything we do,” a Facebook spokesperson tells The Verge. “We will continue to work closely with Facebook’s Responsible AI team to ensure we are looking at potential biases across our respective platforms.”

The new equity team — as it’s called within Instagram (a similar team is being formed to study Facebook’s main app and website) — marks a departure for the company, which has...

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