Government analysts found that the UK’s rapidly expanding AI surveillance system is horribly biased toward Black and Asian people.
officials in the UK pledged to roll out a country-wide facial recognition system to help police track down criminals. The country’s ministers have launched a 10-week consultation to analyze the regulatory and privacy framework of their AI-powered surveillance panopticon — but one way or another, the all-seeing eye is on its way.
There’s just one tiny wrinkle: the AI facial recognition cameras have a tendency to misidentify non-white people.
New reporting by The Guardian notes that testing of the AI tech conducted by the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) found that it‘s “more likely to incorrectly include some demographic groups in its search results” — specifically Black and Asian people.
Though national police minister Sarah Jones has described facial recognition tech as the “biggest breakthrough for catching criminals since DNA matching,” lower-ranking police commissioners told The Guardian that the NPL finding “sheds light on a concerning inbuilt bias.” They likewise urged caution on the national rollout, which seems to be falling on deaf ears.
