Half of UK data risks bias

In a 2021 survey of 250 data leaders by a UK industry group, respondents unanimously agreed that bias exists in their organization's data sets. "Just under half (49%) of UK data leaders have said their organisation’s data is disproportionately weighted to specific ethnic demographics, increasing the risk that their artificial intelligence systems contain ethnic bias." This finding suggests that such biases are far more widespread than isolated cases revealed by researchers or whistleblowers suggest.

For urban tech, this points a future where substantial effort needs to go into the planning of data collection and curation from the very outset of projects, and strong oversight and controls are put in place to monitor and mitigate bias in data over time.