What is a confirmation bias?
The tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one's pre-existing beliefs or hypotheses.
confirmation bias explained in plain English
The tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one's pre-existing beliefs or hypotheses. Machine learning developers may inadvertently collect or label data in ways that influence an outcome supporting their existing beliefs. Confirmation bias is a form of implicit bias. Experimenter's bias is a form of confirmation bias in which an experimenter continues training models until a pre-existing hypothesis is confirmed.
Example
Practitioners refer to confirmation bias when building, training, or evaluating machine learning systems. It appears in research papers, product documentation, and technical discussions about AI capabilities and limitations.
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