All posts tagged: Bias

Judge ordered to probe claims of juror bias in Boston Marathon bomber’s case

Judge ordered to probe claims of juror bias in Boston Marathon bomber’s case

BOSTON — A federal appeals court on Thursday ordered the judge who oversaw Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s trial to investigate the defense’s claims of juror bias and determine whether his death sentence should stand. A three-judge panel of the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals did not throw out Tsarnaev’s death sentence. Defense lawyers had pushed for that while claiming bias by two people who sat on the jury that convicted him for his role in the bombing that killed three people and injured hundreds near the marathon’s finish line in 2013. But the appeals court found that the trial judge did not adequately probe Tsarnaev’s allegations, and sent the case back to the judge for a new investigation. If the judge finds that either juror should have been disqualified, he should vacate Tsarnaev’s sentence and hold a new penalty-phase trial to determine whether Tsarnaev should be sentenced to death, the appeals court said. “And even then, we once again emphasize that the only question in any such proceeding will be whether Tsarnaev will face …

Fed Remains On Hold, But 'Dots' Reveal Hawkish Bias

Fed Remains On Hold, But 'Dots' Reveal Hawkish Bias

Fed Remains On Hold, But ‘Dots’ Reveal Hawkish Bias Tl;dr: No change for rates, barely any change in the statement, upgraded economic growth, but big ‘signals’ from the Dot-Plot with 2024 remaining the same (3 rate-cuts) but 2025, 2026, and beyond all seeing higher rates (less cuts). 2024 Median dot: unchanged at 3 cuts, but composition changed… 2 officials saw no cuts (unch) 2 officials sew one cut (one more than in Dec) 5 officials saw two cuts (unchanged) 9 officials saw three cuts (up from 6 in Dec) 1 saw four cuts (down from five who saw 4 or more cuts in Dec) …literally one voter stood between 50bps and 75bps in cuts in 2024… …and the so-called neutral rate is higher… …and implicit admission that the inflation target will eventually be lifted. *  *  * Since the last FOMC meeting (Jan 31st), bitcoin has been the big winner (and bonds the biggest loser). Gold and stocks have outperformed even with the dollar rising modestly… Source: Bloomberg Even more notably, stocks have rallied since …

Technology must tackle bias in medical devices | Health

Technology must tackle bias in medical devices | Health

The independent review on equity in medical devices once again highlights the multiple ways in which medical technology development can lead to solutions whereby the benefits are distributed inequitably across society, or can further exacerbate health inequalities (UK report reveals bias within medical tools and devices, 11 March). While the report is welcome, the challenge facing scientists and engineers is how to innovate medical devices differently to respond to longstanding societal biases and inequalities. This means doing two things. First, it is essential to move beyond a superficial engagement with patients. As the report emphasises, technology development cannot be based only on the expertise of engineers or the knowledge of healthcare professionals. It needs to respond to the different social, cultural and health experiences of diverse groups of people. To be effective, this means recognising differences and actively supporting marginalised groups to represent themselves. Second, engineers must recognise that the outcomes of medical technologies are not produced solely by the devices themselves – the algorithms or chemicals. How people interact with devices in the environments …

New study reveals positive bias towards androgynous faces

New study reveals positive bias towards androgynous faces

New research in the European Journal of Social Psychology provides interesting insights into social perceptions related to androgyny, which refers to a blend of characteristics traditionally associated with both masculinity and femininity. The findings indicate while androgynous faces are more challenging to classify into binary sex categories, they are not judged negatively for this ambiguity. In fact, the study found an overall positive bias towards androgynous faces, particularly when compared to masculine ones, suggesting a complex relationship between facial recognition, gender perception, and social judgment. Inspired by the uncanny valley hypothesis — originally proposed to explain our eerie responses to almost-human figures — the authors behind the new study sought to understand if the ambiguity in categorizing androgynous faces might elicit similar unease or negative biases. Previous studies had suggested that difficulty in categorization could trigger negative emotional responses, affecting social judgments. “My background is in moral psychology. Since the first time that I read about the uncanny valley hypothesis, I felt that there was something going on about that proposal that may have some …

UK report reveals bias within medical tools and devices | Health

UK report reveals bias within medical tools and devices | Health

Minority ethnic people, women and people from deprived communities are at risk of poorer healthcare because of biases within medical tools and devices, a report has revealed. Among other findings, the Equity in Medical Devices: Independent Review has raised concerns over devices that use artificial intelligence (AI), as well as those that measure oxygen levels. The team behind the review said urgent action was needed. Prof Frank Kee, the director of the centre for public health at Queen’s University Belfast and a co-author of the review, said: “We’d like an equity lens on the entire lifecycle of medical devices, from the initial testing, to recruitment of patients either in hospital or in the community, into the early phase studies and the implementation in the field after they are licensed,.” The junior health minister Andrew Stephenson said: “Making sure the healthcare system works for everyone, regardless of ethnicity, is paramount to our values as a nation. It supports our wider work to create a fairer and simpler NHS.” The government-commissioned review was set up by Sajid …

Scientists Say: Confirmation Bias

Scientists Say: Confirmation Bias

Confirmation bias (noun, “Kahn-ferr-MAY-shun By-us”) Confirmation bias is our natural tendency to seek out and believe information that confirms what we already think — and ignore information that doesn’t. If a piece of information agrees with our beliefs, our instinct is to accept that it’s true. We’re often happy to learn this information. We tend to overlook any flaws in it. We’re more likely to recall it later. And we may be more likely to act on it. But when we’re given information that contradicts or complicates our views, the story is quite different. Our instinct is to feel defensive and to look for flaws in the information. We also tend to forget this information more quickly. And we may be less likely to act on it. Educators and Parents, Sign Up for The Cheat Sheet Weekly updates to help you use Science News Explores in the learning environment Thank you for signing up! There was a problem signing you up. Allowing confirmation bias to control how we process new information can be dangerous. For …

AI shows clear racial bias when used for job recruiting, new tests reveal

AI shows clear racial bias when used for job recruiting, new tests reveal

In a refrain that feels almost entirely too familiar by now: Generative AI is repeating the biases of its makers. A new investigation from Bloomberg found that OpenAI’s generative AI technology, specifically GPT 3.5, displayed preferences for certain racial in questions about hiring. The implication is that recruiting and human resources professionals who are increasingly incorporating generative AI based tools in their automatic hiring workflows — like LinkedIn’s new Gen AI assistant for example — may be promulgating racism. Again, sounds familiar. The publication used a common and fairly simple experiment of feeding fictitious names and resumes into AI recruiting softwares to see just how quickly the system displayed racial bias. Studies like these have been used for years to spot both human and algorithmic bias among professionals and recruiters. SEE ALSO: Reddit introduces an AI-powered tool that will detect online harassment “Reporters used voter and census data to derive names that are demographically distinct — meaning they are associated with Americans of a particular race or ethnicity at least 90 percent of the time …

LLMs exhibit significant Western cultural bias, study finds

LLMs exhibit significant Western cultural bias, study finds

Join leaders in Boston on March 27 for an exclusive night of networking, insights, and conversation. Request an invite here. A new study by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology has found that large language models (LLMs) exhibit significant bias towards entities and concepts associated with Western culture, even when prompted in Arabic or trained solely on Arabic data. The findings, published on arXiv, raise concerns about the cultural fairness and appropriateness of these powerful AI systems as they are deployed globally. “We show that multilingual and Arabic monolingual [language models] exhibit bias towards entities associated with Western culture,” the researchers wrote in their paper titled, “Having Beer after Prayer? Measuring Cultural Bias in Large Language Models.” The study sheds light on the challenges LLMs face in grasping cultural nuances and adapting to specific cultural contexts, despite advancements in their multilingual capabilities. VB Event The AI Impact Tour – Boston We’re excited for the next stop on the AI Impact Tour in Boston on March 27th. This exclusive, invite-only event, in partnership with Microsoft, …

Still Don’t Think Media Bias Is Real?

Still Don’t Think Media Bias Is Real?

Authored by James Rickards via DailyReckoning.com, “Super Tuesday,” when 15 states and one U.S. territory held presidential primaries, came and went this week with few (if any) surprises as Joe Biden won on the Democratic side, and Trump won the Republican primaries “bigly.” Nikki Haley has finally seen the writing on the wall and dropped out of the race. The only two primaries she won, and it tells you everything you need to know, were the Washington, D.C. swamp and the Socialist People’s Republic of Vermont. She’s an establishment candidate in the mold of Jeb Bush or Mitt Romney. The bottom line is the die is cast. Trump will be the Republican nominee, unless Democrat “lawfare” somehow succeeds in derailing him or something unforeseen happens. That outcome seems less likely after Monday’s 9-0 Supreme Court ruling that prevents states from keeping him off the ballot. It’s been amazing to watch mainstream media outlets cover the Supreme Court ruling. Again, it was a 9-0 decision. But the Court’s three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, argued that the …

Bias against older people in health care settings is common and harmful : Shots

Bias against older people in health care settings is common and harmful : Shots

Dr. Louise Aronson, a geriatrician and author, speaks with a patient at UCSF’s Osher Center for Integrative Health in San Francisco. /Julia Burns hide caption toggle caption /Julia Burns Dr. Louise Aronson, a geriatrician and author, speaks with a patient at UCSF’s Osher Center for Integrative Health in San Francisco. /Julia Burns A recent study found that older people spend an average of 21 days a year on medical appointments. Kathleen Hayes can believe it. Hayes lives in Chicago and has spent a lot of time lately taking her parents, who are both in their 80s, to doctor’s appointments. Her dad has Parkinson’s, and her mom has had a difficult recovery from a bad bout of Covid-19. As she’s sat in, Hayes has noticed some health care workers talk to her parents at top volume, to the point, she says, “that my father said to one, ‘I’m not deaf, you don’t have to yell.’” In addition, while some doctors and nurses address her parents directly, others keep looking at Hayes herself. “Their gaze is on …