Access to the Internet and technology has mostly been restricted to urban dominant castes in India. According to the study–only 50 per cent of people in India have access to the internet and the excluded half mostly comprising of Dalits, Adivasis and Muslims. As a result, the algorithm developed and used cater mostly to the dominant groups, thereby sustaining AI models that perpetuate systemic injustices, bias and barriers for the marginalised communities. For example, the study notes the example of many safety apps being populated by middle-class users and tended to mark Dalit, Muslim, and slum areas as unsafe, potentially leading to hyper-patrolling in these areas. Read the full paper here:
Authors: Nithya Sambasivan, Erin Arnesen, Ben Hutchinson, Tulsee Doshi, Vinodkumar Prabhakaran