How to make sure the future of AI is ethical

As New Scientist points out, "the majority of U.S. police departments using face recognition do little to ensure that the software is accurate." Police departments have neither the expertise nor the inclination to critically evaluate software that claims to make their jobs easier. "This is magic that will make your job easier" is a tempting sales pitch for people who are already doing a hard job. It's way too easy for an uninformed official to fantasize about AI systems that will detect terrorists. It takes someone who isn't ignorant about AI to point out the problems with such a proposal, not the least of which is that the number of terrorists is so small that it would be impossible to build a good data set for training.