😮 Every Business Owner Needs to Know This
Imagine you’re looking in a funhouse mirror. Everything looks weird and distorted, right?
AI works the same way when you feed it wonky data. It reflects back what you give it, just amplified and automated.
Amazon learned this the hard way. They built an AI to screen resumes and make hiring faster. Sounds great, right?
Except the system taught itself to downgrade resumes that included the word “women’s” (like “women’s chess club captain”).
Why? Because it learned from 10 years of hiring data, and tech had historically hired more men.
The AI wasn’t trying to be sexist.
It was just pattern-matching based on the past (link)
Here’s an even scarier one:
Some hospitals started using AI to figure out which patients needed extra care. The system used “cost of care” as a proxy for “health needs.”
Since our healthcare system has historically spent less money on Black patients, the AI concluded they needed less help.
Same illness.
Same severity.
Different recommendation based on race.
All because of a badly chosen data point. (link)
The hard truth?
These systems mirror our past decisions, both good and bad. When we don’t actively work to fix old problems, AI makes them worse. Fast.
💰 Why This Hits Your Bottom Line
You might be thinking, “Jim, I run a small business. This Big Tech stuff doesn’t apply to me.”
Think again.
If you use any automated system for decisions about people, you’re in this game:
- That applicant tracking system filtering resumes? It might be screening out stay-at-home parents returning to work.
- Your Facebook ad targeting? It could be excluding entire communities without you knowing.
- That customer service chatbot? If it only understands “standard” American English, you’re leaving money on the table.
This isn’t just about doing the right thing (though that matters).
It’s about trust, reputation, and avoiding expensive lawsuits. One viral TikTok about your biased AI could tank years of brand building.
One more reason I don’t condone the Prompt > Copy > Publish mindset most of these Twitter AI ‘gurus’ will sell you on their completely-automated-game-changing-automate-a-whole-business nonsense.
📝 Your Bias-Busting Action Plan
The good news is that you don’t need a computer science degree to fix this. You just need a plan.
Here’s exactly what to do:
- Check your data sources
- Test across different groups
- Get fresh perspectives
- Demand explanations
- Know who owns what
🔮 What’s Next?
The regulatory train has left the station.
The U.S., Canada, and several Asian countries are drafting laws based on the EU AI Act. Soon, bias audits won’t be optional for any system touching credit, hiring, housing, or healthcare.
The fines?
They’ll make past penalties look like parking tickets.
Smart businesses are getting ahead of this now.
Not because they have to, but because customers are starting to ask hard questions about how decisions get made.
And you should be too.
—
Ok let’s say all of this just sounds great and we forget it all in 10 mins.
I get it. We’re busy, and we need to get back to work.
The one thing you can remind yourself to do to get closer to feeling more confident?
Check the citations.
It’s worked for Wikipedia since the beginning, and it will work for you too.
👌🏻
🚀 What Our Community Is Building
I launched this newsletter after realizing that most AI chatter was just noise, tweets with no proof, “experts” with no shipping record.
What I craved (and couldn’t find) was a signal-rich space where entrepreneurs and leaders could see how real people are turning the latest AI trends into live products.
Where they can share the exact tools that moved the needle, and push each other to go further.
Join me and you’ll step into monthly live office hours where I stay until every roadblock is solved, daily micro-demos that surface the only tools worth testing, and an open brain trust of founders, devs, marketers, and nonprofit leaders who trade templates, shortcuts, and collaboration invites in real time.
Let’s chat AI inside.
