Author: N/A; Publisher: Wired; Publication Year: 2018. The following video discusses how cops in Los Angeles (& many places) are using predictive algorithms in policing. Proponents say it is effective at reducing crime, but many people argue that it helps police justify racial profiling. The data is biased because policing statistics have always disproportionately targeted minorities, so these algorithms can not…
Author: Stephen Spielberg; Publisher: N/A; Publication Year: 2002. The following film starring Tom Cruise concerns a future where people are arrested by a “Pre-Crime” unit before a crime is committed. There are several biases involved in this practice since certain groups of people may be targeted more than others based on past history. About halfway through the movie, ulterior motives for the founding of the Pre-…
Author: Peter Asaro; Publisher: IEEE Xplore; Publication Year: 2019. The following article looks at predictive policing from 2 lenses they refer to as the Ethics of Care Approach and the Models of Threat Approach. The Ethics of Care Approach “considers the factors that lead people to violate the law and seek out new interventions that make crimes less likely, thus requiring fewer resources to enforce the law.” The Models of…
Author: Kenneth Cukier; Publisher: TED; Publication Year: 2014. The following talk’s primary idea is that when you have more data, you can see patterns and trends than you would have if you had small amounts of data. It allows us to see new, better, and different perspectives. We live in a day in age where we have more data than we know what to do with. Information used to come in clay disks. We still use disks to…
Author: Josh Entsminger, Mark Esposito, Terence Tse; Publisher: Project Syndicate; Publication Year: 2022. The following article discusses how the “metaverse” is a term describing a dystopian society characterized by the immersion of virtual reality into daily life. The development of new technologies as we head towards the metaverse requires greater focus on data ethics to monitor these developments. As ethics fall behind in the tradeoff between…
Author: Jonathan Hofer; Publisher: Medium; Publication Year: 2020. The following article focuses on Cincinnati but is applicable nationwide. Their biased policing data is feeding into creating a biased predictive model. A case of “garbage in, garbage out” has repercussions for minority communities. They mention that while they know that the data is biased, the fix is not simple because it is hard to decide how to truly…
Author: Johana Bhuiyan; Publisher: The Guardian; Publication Year: 2021. The following article describes how since the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), cities have been incorporating the use of AI to stop potential crimes. One strategy being used is predictive policing. Predictive Policing is the use of algorithms to analyze crime information to predict and prevent future crimes. Los Angeles, California, adopted predictive…
Author: Daniel Munro; Publisher: Maclean’s; Publication Year: 2017. The following article discusses how police agencies are using data collection techniques to perform “predictive” policing to determine where crimes are more likely to happen in the future and by whom. However, there is a major ethical concern revolving around individual privacy. There have been instances of models predicting higher crime risk…
Author: Barry Lam; Publisher: Hi-Phi Nation; Publication Year: 2019. The following podcast episode explores how the promise of machine learning and artificial intelligence to increase efficiency in all walks of life has found its way into the world of policing. Barry Lam discusses the case of predictive policing in Los Angeles, showing us the various programs being implemented (e.g., PredPol,…