A senior technology executive has warned the data used to build algorithms driving artificial intelligence can lead to bias and sexism.

Emily Rich, managing director of startups at Microsoft Australia, told the Startup Grind conference in Melbourne on Monday that a lack of diversity in the data used for artificial intelligence raised serious issues.

"Uber's self-driving cars were running red lights because they had misclassified data in the algorithms," she said. "Last year the UK home office put in a passport facial recognition system that could only detect white skin. So these are the kind of catastrophic things that happen, that are actually happening every day, and it's due to this data that is not diverse."

Emily Rich managing director of startups at Microsoft Australia says the largest facial data set in the world is based on 80 per cent men and 75 per cent white men. Credit:Peter Braig

Ms Rich said most companies from startups to the world's biggest listed companies were investing more in AI than ever before but often the algorithms were not always correct.