Tutorial 5 Activities#

The required pre-reading for this tutorial is chapter 5 of Cathy O’Neil’s book, Weapons of Math Destruction. (Available here on the LMS).

For further (optional) reading, check out AI ethics in predictive policing: From models of threat to an ethics of care

Activities#

The Australian city of Emu-town has experienced a surge in crime in recent years, partly due to the closure of a nearby mine that employed some townsfolk. Crimes on the rise include street fighting, graffiti, public drunkenness, burglary, people sleeping in parks and under bridges, tax evasion, welfare fraud, and even homicides. The small police force, consisting of only 10 white officers (7 male, 3 female), is struggling to deal with the surge. Some residents have left town for other nearby centres that are wealthier and have lower crime rates.

Furthermore, tourists have begun to find the town a little too “rough” and are tending to bypass it. Realising all this, the town mayor is putting pressure on police to strongly clamp down on all crime, and so to produce better results to ensure that Emu-town is a viable place to live. Emu-town contains Indigenous Australians, many of whom are unemployed; and groups of poorer white people. A leafier area contains many middle class professionals.

Leader of the police force, Sergeant Mal Borne, has started deploying a predictive policing tool that helps police make decisions about where to patrol for crime, to make best use of the limited members of the force. This “Predpol” tool uses AI that is trained on Emu-town’s historical police data about occurrences of crime. It is designed to predict both the locations of crime and also individuals who may be more likely to progress from more minor crimes to more major ones. Police can then target those factors, hopefully with the result that crime rates drop significantly. Early results show that crime rates are potentially dropping.

Answer the following questions in your groups:

  1. What are some of the risks and benefits of this Predpol tool?

  2. Is the use of the tool ethically justified? What might virtue ethics and care ethics have to say about it?

Note

As always, nominate a note taker and post your notes! Here’s a link to this week’s forum discussion.