Opening the 'Black Box' of Artificial Intelligence

In February of 2013, Eric Loomis was driving around in the small town of La Crosse in Wisconsin, US, when he was stopped by the police. The car he was driving turned out to have been involved in a shooting, and he was arrested. Eventually a court sentenced him to six years in prison. This might have been an uneventful case, had it not been for a piece of technology that had aided the judge in making the decision. They used COMPAS, an algorithm that determines the risk of a defendant becoming a recidivist.