“When Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. visited Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute last month, he was asked a startling question, one with overtones of science fiction.”
Read: Sent to Prison by a Software Program’s Secret Algorithms
“When civil liberties advocates discuss the dangers of new policing technologies, they often point to sci-fi films like “RoboCop” and “Minority Report” as cautionary tales. In “RoboCop,” a massive corporation purchases Detroit’s entire police department.”
Read: Taser Will Use Police Body Camera Videos “to Anticipate Criminal Activity”
“Otis Nash works six days a week at two jobs, as a security guard and a pest control technician, but still struggles to make the $190.69 monthly Geico car insurance payment for his 2012 Honda Civic LX. Across town, Ryan Hedges has a similar insurance policy with Geico.”
Read: Minority Neighborhoods Pay Higher Car Insurance Premiums Than White Areas With the Same Risk
“The secretive ride-hailing giant Uber rarely discusses internal matters in public. But in March, facing crises on multiple fronts, top officials convened a call for reporters to insist that Uber was changing its culture and would no longer tolerate “brilliant jerks.””
Read: How Uber Uses Psychological Tricks to Push Its Drivers’ Buttons
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“Midnight, January 8, 2016. High above the snow-covered tundra of arctic Sweden, a Canadair CRJ-200 cargo jet made a beeline through the -76 degree air. Inside the cockpit, the pilot in command studied the approach information for Tromsø, Norway.”
“Google’s Jigsaw unit, as part of a larger effort to battle online trolling, said earlier today that it was releasing a new tool called Perspective, software that uses machine learning to detect harassment and abuse online.”
Read: Google just made its troll-detecting software available to developers
“Amazon has filed a motion to dismiss a search warrant for recordings from an Echo owned by a suspected murderer. Amazon argues that both its users’ requests to Alexa and the response the company produces are protected under the First Amendment.”
Read: Amazon says Alexa’s speech is protected by the First Amendment
“An unseen force is rising – helping to determine who is hired, granted a loan, or even how long someone spends in prison. This force is called the coded gaze.”
“As machine learning is increasingly used to make important decisions across core social domains, the work of ensuring that these decisions aren’t discriminatory becomes crucial.”