Technology Academics Policy - Kate Crawford Examines Discrimination in Artificial Intelligence Systems

In a recent op-ed for The New York Times, Microsoft Principal Researcher Kate Crawford discusses what she sees as the a very real problem with artificial intelligence today: "Sexism, racism and other forms of discrimination are being built into the machine-learning algorithms that underlie the technology behind many "intelligent" systems that shape how we are categorized and advertised to." Below are a few excerpts from "Artificial Intelligence's White Guy Problem." Police departments across the United States are also deploying data-driven risk-assessment tools in "predictive policing" crime prevention efforts. In many cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Miami, software analyses of large sets of historical crime data are used to forecast where crime hot spots are most likely to emerge; the police are then directed to those areas. At the very least, this software risks perpetuating an already vicious cycle, in which the police increase their presence in the same places they are already policing (or overpolicing), thus ensuring that more arrests come from those areas.