Re: There is a flip side...
More than that, people actually *want* biased results. I saw an interesting set of observations from someone who was working on targeted advertising. He said they had a horrible problem with racist results.
What seems to have actually been happening was that his software was identifying that individuals with string X set to W were more likely to click through on one set of ads and individuals with string X set to B were clicking on a different set. So they eliminated string x from consideration.
Next the software identified individuals with at least two of strings A, B and C set to one value as being more likely to click through on one set, and vice versa. And guess what, there was a strong correlation between having two of those 3 set and having string X set to W, and so it went on.
Gradually they eliminated every decision point that could be said to be racist. And their click through rate plummeted.