Gli algoritmi come costrutti culturali. Una minaccia per l’inclusione scolastica e sociale

Capitalist and post-industrial societies are based on dualisms - including me/other, mind/body, nature/culture, man/woman, skillful/disabled, white/black - and on a variety of factors - which reflect a world view tailored to a dominant male subject, of a white and workable “race”, whose “normality” is defined through parameters such as heterosexuality and individual productivity. This cultural framework contaminates the design of algorithms; the fact that they are expressed in mathematical language would suggest their total neutrality, but in recent years many authors - including several mathematicians - have begun to emphasize partiality of algorithms and describe them as cultural constructs. The decisions, questions and aims of the algorithm’s creator directly affect the answers provided by the algorithm. If the dataset on which the algorithm is practiced is not diversified by gender, “race” and ability/disability, the machine will give us a view of things often marked by prejudices and stereotypes that can reinforce asymmetries and social injustices. In fact, the technicians who instruct and educate the algorithms are mainly male who, inevitably, tend to introduce into the system fragments of the heterosexual and patriarchal culture, based on the domain of the white “race”, as confirmed by the same “2018 Report on Diversity” of Google and Apple.