Experts say a European artificial intelligence watchdog should be set up to protect individuals against discrimination by automated computer systems which make key decisions on lives following a spate of cases revealing the impact AI is having on rights. According to the Guardian, teachers recently won a lawsuit in the US over a computer programme assessing their performance using a software programme comparing their students' test score against state averages. And offenders in the US are now getting longer sentences if a computer programme, Compas, deems them as having a high risk of re-offending. Sandra Wachter, Brent Mittelstadt, and Luciano Floridi, a research team at the Alan Turing Institute in London and the University of Oxford, have called for a trusted third party body that can investigate AI decisions for people who believe they have been discriminated against.

Higher stakes

Bad AIs have made a range of mistakes and have discriminated on the basis of names, addresses, gender and skin colour. 'Many AIs employ such complex neural networks that even their designers cannot explain how they arrive at answers.The decisions are delivered from a “black box” and must essentially be taken on trust. That may not matter if the AI is recommending the next series of Game of Thrones. But the stakes are higher if the AI is driving a car, diagnosing illness, or holding sway over a person’s job or prison sentence,' the article says.  Source: The Guardian