AI reinforces racism

Unite delegate Susan Matthews gave an impassioned speech as she moved a motion on Artificial Intelligence (AI) on the final day of Labour conference on Wednesday (September 25).

“We are only beginning to understand the massive scale of AI’s impact on our workplaces, industries, and society,” she told conference, adding that she wanted to focus on a “significant threat of AI that gets too little or no attention at all”.

“It is about how the entrenched, systemic discrimination and marginalisation of people in our society is recreated, replicated and extended into new areas through the use of AI,” she noted.

Susan told of how new technologies are enabling racism, discrimination and practices such as blacklisting trade unionists.

But she added that such racism and discrimination were nothing new.

“It’s the same old discrimination and oppression of all with protected characteristics,” Susan told conference.

She highlighted how in the US, police have arrested the wrong Black person because the AI they use had been trained to see all Black people as looking the same.

Meanwhile, in the UK, Susan added, “software was used to award exam marks that penalise students from Black and Asian Ethnic minority backgrounds and low-income and gentrification neighbourhoods”.

“We have seen how misinformation, disinformation and hate filled social media content is directed to people and spreads rapidly, delivering social division,” she went on to say, as she highlighted the racist riots over the summer.  

“Research is already finding that software models are replicating racist stereotypes,” Susan continued. “This is already happening – it is not a potential in the future. It’s present now.”

She noted that it was a mistake to think technology was “above human prejudices” and “neutral”.

“Remember it’s input by a human — this is not a ‘technology’ problem,” she said. “It is – at root – a human problem – a social, economic, deprivation, industrial and political problem.”

She called on conference to urge Labour to use the power that it has to “prevent the further embedding and extension of all forms of prejudice and discrimination in our workplaces, public sector bodies and society as a whole”.

She said this must include “statutory workplace equality representatives” which Labour had previously promised and which she would continue holding the government to account over.

Concluding her speech with a quote from civil rights leader Malcolm X, Susan said to applause, “Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.”

By Hajera Blagg

Photo by Mark Thomas