The role of artificial intelligence (AI) in American life was a hot topic of discussion at a conference for judicial educators that I attended earlier this week. The conference launched with a screening of the documentary Coded Bias, which explores disparities in the data that inform algorithms for a range of computerized functions from facial recognition to loan eligibility to insurance risk. The documentary highlights the vast amount of data collected and controlled by a small number of large U.S. companies and the lack of regulation governing its use. A panel of experts spoke after the screening about what judges should know about AI. Several of those topics related to its use in preventing, investigating and punishing crime. Crime prevention. AI has long been a feature of modern policing. Compstat, a data-driven performance management system for law enforcement agencies, was launched in the early 1990s and its use has been widespread for more than a decade. Compstat and other similar programs require the collection, mapping, and analysis of nearly real-time data on incidents of crime and their location. Law enforcement leaders then use that data to manage police resources and tactics and to evaluate performance. The goal is to prevent crime as opposed to merely responding to it – a strategy sometimes referred to as predictive policing. Detractors complain that not only is predictive policing susceptible to feedback loops, “where police are repeatedly sent back to the same neighborhoods regardless of the actual crime rate,” but that such feedback loops can [...]
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