Facebook is trying to make AI fairer by paying people to give it data

In an effort to help make AI fairer in a variety of ways, Facebook is rolling out a new data set for AI researchers that includes a diverse group of paid actors who were explicitly asked to provide their own ages and genders.

Facebook hopes researchers will use the open-source data set, which it announced Thursday, to help judge whether AI systems work well for people of different ages, genders, skin tones, and in different types of lighting. (The data set is not meant to be used to train AI to identify people by their gender, age, or skin tone, the company said, as this would violate the terms of the data use.) Facebook also released the data set internally for use within Facebook itself; the company said in a blog post that it is "encouraging" teams to use it. The data set, called "Casual Conversations," includes 3,011 people from around the United States and 45,186 videos. Facebook gave the data set that name because participants were recorded while giving unscripted answers to a variety of pre-chosen questions.