A Law Enforcement A.I. Is No More or Less Biased Than People

Some people champion artificial intelligence as a solution to the kinds of biases that humans fall prey to. Even simple statistical tools can outperform people at tasks in business, medicine, academia, and crime reduction. Others chide AI for systematizing bias, which it can do even when bias is not programmed in. In 2016, ProPublica released a much-cited report arguing that a common algorithm for predicting criminal risk showed racial bias. Now a new research paper reveals that, at least in the case of the algorithm covered by ProPublica, neither side has much to get worked up about.