Between fancy global summits, OpenAI’s boardroom drama and rumoured technical breakthroughs, the world has recently been paying close attention to the frontiers of AI research. But last month the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in the US released a memo on the use of more mundane AI systems in government that is likely, in the near term at least, to be equally consequential.
From its use tracking undocumented migrants, to the predictive algorithms police departments deploy to surveil populations and allocate resources, AI is now a common tool of the US government to cut costs – but at the expense of subjecting society’s most vulnerable to arbitrary rule without due process, and with predictably discriminatory outcomes. Researchers, journalists and activists have been calling attention to this for years. That call is at last being answered.
