> Not really sure you can say AI is "racist".

> It can't think, or form opinions. It's not "intelligent" in any real sense.

Honest question, what is the purpose of this comment? What is the change you want to see coming out of this semantic argument?

Ideally, people will stop ascribing thought and intent to a clever IVR script.

In the racism-as-individual-intentional-malice framework sure. But I'm a consequentialist on this one. If it causes disparate & unjust outcomes mediated by perceived race then describing it as racist makes sense. No intent necessary.

No one is arguing that the AI has some sort of intentional racism and inherent real intelligence - they aren't trying to anthropomorphize it.

The argument is that the output is racially discriminatory for a variety of reasons and it's easier to just say "it's racist" than "Many of the datasets that AI is trained on under- or over-represent many ethnic groups" and then dive into the details there.

It's just Eliza with a really, really* big array of canned responses to interpolate between.*

So, just like people, then.