To demonstrate that prejudice can easily be taught to artificially intelligent machines, computer scientists and psychology experts from MIT and Cardiff University conducted a series of experiments where autonomous machines were instructed in copying, learning and identifying prejudice.

Participating in a game of give and take, participants were tasked with deciding where to “donate”: either to someone within their own prejudicial group or to someone outside their group based on factors such as a person’s reputation and the donor’s degree of prejudice toward outsiders. As the game progresses, a supercomputer generates thousands of simulations.

Co-author of the study Professor Roger Whitaker, from Cardiff University's Crime and Security Research Institute and the School of Computer Science and Informatics, said: "By running these simulations thousands and thousands of times over, we begin to get an understanding of how prejudice evolves and the conditions that promote or impede it.

"Our simulations show that prejudice is a powerful force of nature and through evolution, it can easily become incentivised in virtual populations, to the detriment of wider connectivity with others. Protection from prejudicial groups can inadvertently lead to individuals forming further prejudicial groups, resulting in a fractured population. Such widespread prejudice is hard to reverse."

Consequently, copying such behavior does not necessarily need advanced cognitive abilities, the team concluded.

"It is feasible that autonomous machines with the ability to identify with discrimination and copy others could in the future be susceptible to prejudicial phenomena that we see in the human population," Professor Whitaker continued.

"Many of the AI developments that we are seeing involve autonomy and self-control, meaning that the behaviour of devices is also influenced by others around them. Vehicles and the Internet of Things are two recent examples. Our study gives a theoretical insight where simulated agents periodically call upon others for some kind of resource."

Another finding from the study suggests that under the right conditions, for instance when distinct subpopulations are present within a population, it was more difficult for prejudice to prevail.

"With a greater number of subpopulations, alliances of non-prejudicial groups can cooperate without being exploited. This also diminishes their status as a minority, reducing the susceptibility to prejudice taking hold. However, this also requires circumstances where agents have a higher disposition towards interacting outside of their group," Professor Whitaker concluded.

The research is detailed in the journal Scientific Reports.