The detrimental effects of black box algorithms have taken their toll on unprivileged groups. Meanwhile, disconnected lawmakers have shown no concern for civil rights laws as they apply to artificial intelligence.

Artificial intelligence (AI) legislation is needed to stop the relentless trampling of civil rights. Additionally, taxpayers should not have to pay for the imminent tsunami of law suits resulting from this legislative shirking of duty.

Placing computer code in the metaphorical “black box” is common. Typically, an organization hides the code used in a computer program such as AI software. Corporations have fought to keep this code hidden.

They claim that transparency would result in intellectual property theft. However, this code opacity has resulted in violations of civil rights laws.

ProPublica exposed one such violation in the article, “Machine Bias.” The article describes an algorithm being used by law enforcement agencies throughout the United States.

It is being used to convict individuals of crimes, predict recidivism, and assign prison sentences. AI software seems like a great way to expedite these processes, right?

One problem — it does not work. It suffers from alarming rates of false positives and false negatives. Additionally, these rates have worse outcomes for people of color. To worsen matters, the questionnaire providing data for the algorithm includes questions like:

• “Was one of your parents ever sent to jail or prison?”
• “How many of your friends/acquaintances are taking drugs illegally?”

This is not exactly textbook AI ethics. The algorithm does one thing well — it ruins the lives of some citizens forever.

A false positive could trigger wrongful sentencing. This can result in a person going to jail for 10 years instead of 2. In the case of a false negative, a dangerous individual could be released early on their own recognizance, only to commit more crimes.

Numerous other problems exist with these types of algorithms. For example, the limitations and problems of facial recognition have been known for some time now, e.g., unwarranted search and seizure.

Those that favor black box algorithms cling to two vacuous arguments:

• “These black box algorithms are required to protect intellectual property.”
• “Protecting intellectual property and civil rights is a zero sum game and a tradeoff is required.”

#predictive-analytics #data-science #computer-science #law #algorithms