I'm Lee Rowland.

From the ACLU, this is At Liberty, the podcast where we discuss today's most important civil rights and civil liberties issues.

In recent weeks, hundreds of Amazon employees have spoken out to oppose the company marketing its facial recognition software

for use by immigration and customs enforcement. They join a chorus of voices, both in the tech

world and outside of it, who are concerned about the use of artificial intelligence by law

enforcement and what that means for our civil liberties. We're replaying an earlier episode

on this topic featuring Meredith Whitaker of the AI Now Institute. We'll be back next week

with a new episode of At Liberty. Today, artificial intelligence. It's everywhere in our homes, in our cars, our offices,

and, of course, online. So maybe it should come as no surprise that government decisions

are also being outsourced to computer code. In one Pennsylvania County, for example,

child and family services uses digital tools to assess the likelihood that a child is at risk of abuse.

Los Angeles contracts with the data giant Palantier to engage in predictive policing in which algorithms identify residents who might commit future crimes.

Local police departments are buying Amazon's facial recognition tool,

which can automatically identify people as they go about their lives in public.

What does all this mean for our civil liberties? And how do we exercise oversight of an algorithm?

Here to talk through this brave new world with us is Meredith Whitaker. She's co-founder and executive director of AI Now, a research institute that studies the social implications of artificial intelligence.

Meredith is a distinguished research scientist at New York University, the founder of Google's Open Research Group, and an expert on digital privacy and security issues.

Meredith, thank you so much for being with us today.

It's my pleasure.

Thank you so much for speaking with me.

Of course.

So let's start big, maybe with just some definitional terms.

...