Up And Atom

Today's Up and Atom sees our two ladies of science traverse timelines. Travelling to the past to talk about dinosaurs or rather chicken dinosaurs, and then heading to a future which could be populated by racist and gender bias robots. The beak is considered one of the most prominent features which make up the anatomy of the chicken. But, the current beak wasn't always as sharp and pointed as it is now. Realising the chicken needs two different genes to develop their beak, they suppressed one. The result.... some interesting effects on the embryo's beak, or should we say, snout! The two then power forward to a future of prejudice artificial intelligence. A recent AI tool used to revolutionise computers has been found to have some striking discriminations against certain genders and races, and of course, it's all the fault of us humans. Could these machines be absorbing deeply ingrained biases concealed within the patterns of our own language? Lucy and Alice discuss.