RightsCon report: Machine learning systems that discriminate violate human rights, says declaration

Machine learning software has been touted as the next wave of innovation, promising to help governments and businesses make faster and more accurate decisions. But human rights activists and technology groups warned Wednesday that creating systems that discriminate should be treated as a violation of human rights. It came with the release at the RightsCon conference of the so-called Toronto Declaration on preventing machine learning from being used to support discrimination. Machine learning systems – sometimes called artificial intelligence – are more than pattern recognition software, say adherents of the declaration. Used wrongly – deliberately or inadvertently -- by data scientists and software developers, they can violate privacy, data protection, freedom of expression, participation in cultural life and equality before the law.