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 racial-profiling algorithm show ai


This startup's racial-profiling algorithm shows AI can be dangerous way before any robot apocalypse

#artificialintelligence

The biggest danger AI poses today isn't the potential of killer robots or Roko's Basilisk--it's the potential to scale bias and racism to the size of the internet. The latest example of this is an "ethnicity detection" algorithm marketed by Moscow-based NtechLab as an "upcoming feature" to the facial recognition technology it sells. The new algorithm which promises to accurately look at images of people and determine their ethnic background; an image that was on the site, but has since been removed due to public backlash, showed classifications like "European," "African," and "Arabic." While the image has been removed, ethnicity recognition is still listed as an upcoming product on the NtechLab site. Privacy advocates like the American Civil Liberties Union already decry the use of facial-recognition AI in most cases, making the case that widespread adoption of the technology would mean we would live under constant surveillance by police or large tech companies.