How AI Is Influencing Decisions In Police Departments And Courtrooms. Sept 13, 2019

Science Friday

Science Friday and WNYC Studios

Science, Life Sciences, Wnyc, Natural Sciences, Friday

4.4 • 6.3K Ratings

🗓️ 13 September 2019

⏱️ 47 minutes

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Summary

Facial recognition technology is all around us—it’s at concerts, airports, and apartment buildings. But its use by law enforcement agencies and courtrooms raises particular concerns about privacy, fairness, and bias, according to some researchers. Some studies have shown that some of the major facial recognition systems are inaccurate. Amazon’s software misidentified 28 members of Congress and matched them with criminal mugshots. These inaccuracies tend to be far worse for people of color and women. We'll talk about how AI is guiding the decisions of police departments and courtrooms across the country—and whether we should be concerned. Plus: Scientists were threatened with firings after the National Weather Service projections for Hurricane Dorian contradicted President Trump’s tweets, and more of the biggest science stories from the week. Finally, wind turbines are great at producing green energy. But when they reach they end of their life-span, their parts are incredibly difficult to recycle.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. In the weeks following the National Weather Service, contradicting President Trump's prediction about the path of Hurricane Dorian, also known as hashtag Sharpie Gate, there have been reported threats of firings and suppression of science at the agency. Here to fill us in is Sophie Bushwick, technology editor at Scientific American.
0:22.8	Welcome back. Sophie, always good to see you. Thank you. So let's talk about this. What happened
0:27.9	in the weeks after Dorian? How has that administration and agency handled this?
0:33.6	Well, the president and his support staff have doubled down on the idea that Alabama really was at risk from Hurricane Dorian. And then this was contradicted when the National Weather Service office in Birmingham tweeted that Alabama was in no danger, which makes a lot of sense in terms of preparation. You don't want people making runs on stores or
0:54.2	thinking they have to evacuate if there's no danger. And then the New York Times has recently
0:58.6	reported that the Secretary of Commerce then threatened Noah, the National Weather Service is part of
1:04.2	Noah, and they threatened to fire the political appointees if they didn't issue a corrective to the message.
1:13.7	And so as a result, there was an unsigned memo that Noah released sort of saying that the
1:18.4	Alabama office shouldn't have tweeted out that Alabama wasn't going to be in danger.
1:22.5	So they were really asking politics to triumph over science in this case.
1:26.5	That's correct. And this really kind of points out the danger of a post-truth era, right?
1:30.3	Like it's one thing if you're arguing about the size of a crowd.
1:33.3	And it's another thing when you're talking about people's lives at risk.
1:36.6	I mean, knowing accurately where a hurricane is going to strike and what areas are in danger
1:42.2	in which areas are not is really vital to saving people's
1:45.2	lives and also to preventing damage.
1:48.1	And if you can't rely on that and if you so distrust of the weather service, that's potentially
1:53.7	extremely dangerous.
1:55.0	So because for the next time you may think it's a hoax also.
1:58.6	Exactly.
1:59.4	Exactly.
1:59.8	If you can't trust an accurate hurricane forecast, then you're not going to take action in the best possible way.
	...

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