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Undress or fail : Instagram’s algorithm strong-arms users into showing skin - 19 juin 2020
An exclusive investigation reveals that Instagram prioritizes photos of scantily-clad men and women, shaping the behavior of content creators and the worldview of 140 millions Europeans in what remains a blind spot of EU regulations.
Sarah is a food entrepreneur in a large European city (the name was changed). (...)
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Automated moderation tool from Google rates People of Color and gays as “toxic” - 20 mai 2020
A systematic review of Google’s Perspective, a tool for automated content moderation, reveals that some adjectives are considered more toxic than others.
“As a Black woman, I agree with the previous comment.” This phrase has a 32% probability of being “toxic”, according to Google’s Perspective service. For the phrase (...)
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Unchecked use of computer vision by police carries high risks of discrimination - 6 mai 2020
At least 11 local police forces in Europe use computer vision to automatically analyze images from surveillance cameras. The risks of discrimination run high but authorities ignore them.
Pedestrians and motorists in some streets of Warsaw, Mannheim, Toulouse or Kortrijk are constantly monitored for abnormal (...)
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AI Ethics Guidelines Global Inventory - 29 avril 2020
Last year, AlgorithmWatch launched the AI Ethics Guidelines Global Inventory to compile frameworks and guidelines that seek to set out principles of how systems for automated decision-making (ADM) can be developed and implemented ethically. We have now upgraded this directory by revising its categories and adding (...)
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How Dutch activists got an invasive fraud detection algorithm banned – AlgorithmWatch - 22 avril 2020
The Dutch government has been using SyRI, a secret algorithm, to detect possible social welfare fraud. Civil rights activists have taken the matter to court and managed to get public organizations to think about less repressive alternatives.
In its fight against fraud, the Dutch government has been (...)
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Google apologizes after its Vision AI produced racist results - 20 avril 2020
A Google service that automatically labels images produced starkly different results depending on skin tone on a given image. The company fixed the issue, but the problem is likely much broader.
In the fight against the novel coronavirus, many countries ordered that citizens have their temperature checked at (...)
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Automated decision-making systems and the fight against COVID-19 – our position – AlgorithmWatch - 9 avril 2020
As the COVID-19 pandemic rages throughout the world, many are wondering whether and how to use automated decision-making systems (ADMS) to curb the outbreak.
Different solutions are being proposed and implemented in different countries, ranging from authoritarian social control (China) to privacy-oriented, (...)
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Central authorities slow to react as Sweden’s cities embrace automation of welfare management – AlgorithmWatch - 21 mars 2020
Trelleborg is Sweden’s front-runner in automating welfare distribution. An analysis of the system’s source code brought little transparency – but revealed that the personal data of hundreds was wrongly made public.
Trelleborg is a city of 40,000 in Sweden’s far south. Three years ago, it became the first municipality (...)
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Between care and control : 200 years of health data in France – AlgorithmWatch - 12 février 2020
The “Health Data Hub” will soon offer health data on all French citizens to AI startups that request it. It is the latest step in a project to centralize health information that began 200 years ago and kept oscillating between care and control, but mostly control.
Coming back from the 1876 World Hygiene Congress, (...)
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Automating societies : Nine predictions for 2020 – AlgorithmWatch - 5 février 2020
A few days before 2020, AlgorithmWatch makes nine predictions for the new year. Twelve months from now, we will come back to them and assess our forecasting skills.
In May 2020, Hawaii’s Mauna Loa observatory will record the highest carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere since at least 2 million years (...)
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At least 10 police forces use face recognition in the EU, AlgorithmWatch reveals - 15 décembre 2019
The majority of the police forces that answered questions by AlgorithmWatch said they use or plan to introduce face recognition. Use cases vary greatly across countries, but almost all have in common their lack of transparency.
Police departments have long attempted to acquire, structure and store data on the (...)
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"Explainable AI" doesn’t work for online services "“ now there’s proof - 14 novembre 2019
New regulation, such as the GDPR, encourages the adoption of "explainable artificial intelligence." Two researchers claim to have proof of the impossibility for online services to provide trusted explanations.
Most algorithms labelled "artificial intelligence" automatically identify relationships in large data (...)
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Palantir, the secretive data behemoth linked to the Trump administration, expands into Europe - 11 novembre 2019
The data analysis company, known in particular for running the deportation machine of the Trump administration, is expanding aggressively into Europe. Who are its clients ?
Palantir was founded in 2004, in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Its founders wanted to help intelligence agencies organize the data (...)
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Facebook enables automated scams, but fails to automate the fight against them - 9 novembre 2019
Scammers massively use Facebook’s advertising platform using so-called "cloakers" to evade automated checks. They would be very simple to detect but, despite announcements to the contrary, Facebook seems to tolerate them.
Facebook’s targeted advertising revolutionized confidence tricks, or scams, by which a (...)
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New report by AlgorithmWatch : Identity-management and citizen scoring in Ghana, Rwanda, Tunisia, Uganda, Zimbabwe and China - 25 octobre 2019
A review of identity-management practices in five African countries shows that much of the continent is well on its way towards comprehensive biometric registration. It could enable comprehensive citizen scoring or automated surveillance in the near future.
The report Identity-management and citizen scoring in (...)
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Germany’s data ethics commission releases 75 recommendations with EU-wide application in mind - 25 octobre 2019
A new document presented to the German government argues for more regulations in automated decision-making. AlgorithmWatch welcomes some proposals.
This Wednesday, the "data ethics commission" of the German government released a 240-page report (pdf). It contains 75 concrete recommendations regarding the (...)
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Defective computing : How algorithms use speech analysis to profile job candidates - 2 octobre 2019
Some companies and scientists present Affective Computing, the algorithmic analysis of personality traits also known as "artificial emotional intelligence" , as an important new development. But the methods that are used are often dubious and present serious risks for discrimination.
It was announced with some (...)
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Personal Scoring in the EU : Not quite Black Mirror yet, at least if you’re rich - 18 septembre 2019
In October 2016, the British dystopian TV series Black Mirror aired Nosedive. In that episode, citizens use their cell phones to review each other on a 5-star scale after each social interaction and everyone’s average score is visible to everyone else. In such a world, any unpopular behavior or opinion leads to (...)
