Caesar AI Atlas

Historical Bias

Caesar AI Atlas Definition

Historical bias is bias already present in society or past decision-making that becomes embedded in data. AI systems trained on such data may reproduce or amplify outdated inequalities, stereotypes, or discriminatory patterns even when the model is technically accurate on historical records.

Other Definitions

Historical Bias Source

A type of bias that already exists in the world and has made its way into a dataset. These biases have a tendency to reflect existing cultural stereotypes, demographic inequalities, and prejudices against certain social groups. For example, consider a classification model that predicts whether or not a loan applicant will default on their loan, which was trained on historical loan-default data from the 1980s from local banks in two different communities. If past applicants from Community A were six times more likely to default on their loans than applicants from Community B, the model might learn a historical bias resulting in the model being less likely to approve loans in Community A, even if the historical conditions that resulted in that community's higher default rates were no longer relevant. See Fairness: Types of bias in Machine Learning Crash Course for more information.

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