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AI Government Software

Government Audit of AI With Ties To White Supremacy Finds No AI (venturebeat.com) 148

Khari Johnson writes via VentureBeat: In April 2020, news broke that Banjo CEO Damien Patton, once the subject of profiles by business journalists, was previously convicted of crimes committed with a white supremacist group. According to OneZero's analysis of grand jury testimony and hate crime prosecution documents, Patton pled guilty to involvement in a 1990 shooting attack on a synagogue in Tennessee. Amid growing public awareness about algorithmic bias, the state of Utah halted a $20.7 million contract with Banjo, and the Utah attorney general's office opened an investigation into matters of privacy, algorithmic bias, and discrimination. But in a surprise twist, an audit and report released last week found no bias in the algorithm because there was no algorithm to assess in the first place.

"Banjo expressly represented to the Commission that Banjo does not use techniques that meet the industry definition of artificial Intelligence. Banjo indicated they had an agreement to gather data from Twitter, but there was no evidence of any Twitter data incorporated into Live Time," reads a letter Utah State Auditor John Dougall released last week. The incident, which VentureBeat previously referred to as part of a "fight for the soul of machine learning," demonstrates why government officials must evaluate claims made by companies vying for contracts and how failure to do so can cost taxpayers millions of dollars. As the incident underlines, companies selling surveillance software can make false claims about their technologies' capabilities or turn out to be charlatans or white supremacists -- constituting a public nuisance or worse. The audit result also suggests a lack of scrutiny can undermine public trust in AI and the governments that deploy them.

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Government Audit of AI With Ties To White Supremacy Finds No AI

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  • by Lavandera ( 7308312 ) on Wednesday April 07, 2021 @06:11AM (#61246070)
    This is just the new border of the AI technology - Artificial Artificial Intelligence...
    • by mrseth ( 69273 )

      This is just the new border of the AI technology - Artificial Artificial Intelligence...

      I am so glad I did not have coffee in my mouth when I read this! LOL!!!!

  • Makes sense (Score:3, Informative)

    by nagora ( 177841 ) on Wednesday April 07, 2021 @06:21AM (#61246078)

    White supremacists don't have any actual intelligence, so the simulation is perfect.

    • It turns out they just use an if/then statement on ethnicity but the worst part, they used "GOTO".

    • by K. S. Kyosuke ( 729550 ) on Wednesday April 07, 2021 @07:11AM (#61246160)
      I was told that good artificial intelligence would arrive very soon but that artificial stupidity might remain forever inferior to humans.
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      This fake AI is supposed to scape social media looking for clues in investigations. They example they used was it "solving" a child abduction by collecting data from various sources on the web and in apps, but it appears that rather than AI they just had a skilled operator, a.k.a. Mechanical Turk.

      In other words it was all as scam from the start.

    • So they were paid a few million to do something that a normal person could do with a few keystrokes. It sounds to me like a bad procurement contract, but the company actually delivered the results that they were contracted for. So beyond the marketing speak, I fail to see a contractual performance problem here actually.
    • Neither do black supremacists or female ones. Oh, were we pretending those don't exist?
      • by nagora ( 177841 )

        Neither do black supremacists or female ones. Oh, were we pretending those don't exist?

        I nearly made the same point in my post but it diluted the joke and the article isn't about them so it would be off-topic anyway as well as being pretty obvious.

    • Sorry, but that's naive. Some white supremacists are actually highly intelligent. White supremacist William Luther Pierce for example (author of The Turner Diaries) had a PhD in Physics.

      That's the thing about high intelligence. You can use it to justify all sorts of idiotic beliefs if you feel the need, and don't bother to analyze why those beliefs are so important to you.

      • by sjames ( 1099 )

        The problem is trying to cram a bunch of traits into one axis. Knowledge, intelligence, and wisdom are not the same axis. Knowledge itself is at least 2 axes in itself (thus we sometimes speak of depth of knowledge and breadth of knowledge).

        So William Luther Pierce certainly had intelligence and a narrow but deep knowledge of physics, but probably not much wisdom.

        A more complete picture would include mindfulness, thoughtfulness, and others.

  • by JoshuaZ ( 1134087 ) on Wednesday April 07, 2021 @06:33AM (#61246094) Homepage
    I'm struggling to see how these people shouldn't be prosecuted for fraud. They got a government contract under false pretenses. And they are clearly attempting to continue the same pattern of behavior.From the article " In the wake of the controversy, Banjo appointed a new CEO and rebranded under the name safeXai." They are trying to continue to deliberately encourage a belief that their software is some form of AI. The fact that their are ties to white supremacists, including one who tried to shoot up a synagogue isn't that relevant to this.
    • The fact their previous C-level executive has ties to terrorism has nothing to do with the story. The majority of âoeAIâ in industry has no AI, you can say that of pretty much every antivirus that bills itself as AI, every security product, every camera system, every network access system at best you have a filter or classifier at worst you have a whitelist/blacklist. None of them are continuously trained, especially not on a per customer basis and you have some big names: Cisco, BlackBerry, Sopho

      • So prosecute them too.
        • AI would need to have a clear legal definition. At this point, AI is as good of a term as calling your food All Natural.
          • AI would need to have a clear legal definition. At this point, AI is as good of a term as calling your food All Natural.

            In the case of Utah it depends on the contract and they'll need to show monetary harm to make it worth pursuing. For consumer goods they would fall under consumer protection/false advertising and would have to meet some acceptable definition of AI. Although there's no clear definition of AI I do believe it has some meaning unlike you example as natural could literally mean anything that exists. I don't think we'll ever see a legal definition of AI outside of a very specific context.

      • by werepants ( 1912634 ) on Wednesday April 07, 2021 @09:12AM (#61246462)

        Even if it was a basic classifier, that would probably have been enough to complete an algorithm audit - the fact that they didn't even have something like that means that these guys must be charlatans of the worst sort. Any halfway competent python developer or data scientist could knock together a classifier from an example online within a day or so - this isn't hard stuff, it's one or two google searches away. They must have zero legitimate technical expertise in their company.

    • Maybe the link is that a person formerly engaged in illegal activities remains committed to illegal activities as CEO.

      • So no one can be rehabilitated and either everyone in jail stays there until they die or we execute all of them and save on food. It's your kind of mentality that makes recidivism so high in the US, when people have done their time and been released from prison after paying the court ordered punishment for said crime the rest of society continues to punish them by not employing them and not trusting them. Once guilty, always guilty. Someone makes a mistake when they are younger and for the rest of their
    • by sjames ( 1099 )

      They got a shiny new hood ornament, but it's still attached to a beat up oil burning Pinto.

  • Clearer article: (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Wednesday April 07, 2021 @06:40AM (#61246100)

    The title makes it sound like the AI has ties to white supremacy... and that it doesn't exist. This should clear things us.

    Utah Gave $20 Million Contract to AI Surveillance Firm That Didn’t Have AI [vice.com]

    Utah gave a five-year, $20.7 million contract to an AI surveillance company that did not actually have any AI capabilities, a state auditor has found.

    [...]

    After Motherboard reported about the privacy issues inherent in such an expansive surveillance proposal and a OneZero investigation found that Banjo CEO Damien Patton once pleaded guilty to helping a KKK leader shoot up a synagogue [medium.com], the state's five-year, $20.7 million contract was suspended and a privacy audit was commissioned. The company has since rebranded as "safeXai."

    • by Ecuador ( 740021 )

      The company has since rebranded as "safeXai."

      They can't get away with that rebrand. That's a cartesian product, so the result should still contain ai elements. They should have rebranded as aiX0 or something.

    • Well the term AI is very loosely defined.

      One could argue that a spell checker is an AI, As it takes an input then it determines the best possible outcomes where there isn't a match.

      So this firm may had been doing a keyword search on social media, with "AI" that can find alternate spellings of a keyword.

      I would really blame Utah for spending so much money on a company doing some smoke and mirrors.

    • by sjames ( 1099 )

      Strike one, no actual AI or anything that could be stretched to fit the term.

      Strike 2, CEO is a person who could never in a million years be vetted for any security related position.

      Strike 3, the board couldn't even manage to weed a known terrorist and racist out of the running for CEO of a security related company.

  • by h33t l4x0r ( 4107715 ) on Wednesday April 07, 2021 @07:29AM (#61246196)
    You got a real purty mouth, ain't you?
  • The audit result also suggests a lack of scrutiny can undermine public trust in AI and the governments that deploy them.

    Snake oil brought into disrepute by snake oil salesmen.

  • CEO? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LatencyKills ( 1213908 ) on Wednesday April 07, 2021 @08:00AM (#61246274)
    I hardly read TFS and couldn't care less about what bias their AI may or may not have, or if it even qualifies for AI. My irritation is as to why a 17 year old who shot up a synagogue in 1990 isn't still in prison somewhere and is instead CEO of some company. Aren't there empty beds in Gitmo? He was an adult, he was a klukker, he knew what he was doing. I see it as only secondary that no one was killed. I would have forcibly harvested his organs and thrown away the husk.
    • I hardly read TFS and couldn't care less about what bias their AI may or may not have, or if it even qualifies for AI. My irritation is as to why a 17 year old who shot up a synagogue in 1990 isn't still in prison somewhere and is instead CEO of some company. Aren't there empty beds in Gitmo? He was an adult, he was a klukker, he knew what he was doing. I see it as only secondary that no one was killed. I would have forcibly harvested his organs and thrown away the husk.

      I"m fine with locking up for life all 17 years olds who were guilty of "involvement" with any (non self-defense) shooting.

      (I think you'd find that the resultant lifer cells wouldn't primarily contain white supremacists though. Which may be why we don't do that.)

    • As such, life without parole is no longer a possibility, and the sentences for juveniles are, in general, much shorter than for adults.

    • There's actually a pretty good reason no one was killed - it was an empty building in the middle of the night. Also, he was driving, not shooting. Also, he wasn't an adult. Also, he resigned as CEO. Well, fuck, everything's wrong.

      We can speculate that he didn't murder worshipping Jews because he lacked sufficient balls and stew on that while keeping the organ harvester primed and ready. Because it scratches some peculiar itch.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

      A minor should never, ever be tried as an adult. They don't have the rights of an adult, they should not be saddled with the responsibilities.

      It's their parents' job to teach them not to shoot up a synagogue.

      You should be held responsible for the crimes of your offspring until they reach legal majority. It's the only way to address this ongoing failure in parenting at all levels.

      • Score 1 with no comment history available while my karma has actually just gone up and is at "Excellent"

        Is this what censorship-by-editor looks like?

        • Score 1 with no comment history available while my karma has actually just gone up and is at "Excellent"

          Is this what censorship-by-editor looks like?

          It's showing as:

          Starting Score: 1 point
          Moderation +1
          100% Insightful
          Total Score: 2

          ...to me. Something did erase your +1 karma bonus, somehow. It happens to my posts sometimes too. No idea why. Censorship-by-editor is usually much less subtle than that. When I commented about the failures of the ascii art filter, the editors buried that post, making it inaccessible in the story thread. Not at -1, but not retrievable.

          Hanlon's Razor applies. Slashcode is still as buggy as a stale cowpie in a pasture. One of these days a dung beetle is going to get into the datacenter

  • Too obvious (Score:4, Interesting)

    by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Wednesday April 07, 2021 @08:03AM (#61246284) Journal

    Are we not gonna mention the fact that a white supremacist calling his AI company "Banjo" is a little too on the nose?

    That should have been the first clue, right there.

    • by werepants ( 1912634 ) on Wednesday April 07, 2021 @09:18AM (#61246498)

      Woah, woah, woah. Banjo player here. Just liking the instrument doesn't make you racist - it originated with black communities, after all.

      Now, does it mean that you are a sadistic bastard with poor taste that likes to inflict obnoxious sounds on the eardrums of innocent bystanders? No comment.

      • I've got nothing but love for banjo players. As a dobro player myself, I have many social interactions with banjoists, and many of them are fine people once you get the banjo out of their hands.

        I just think a white supremacist calling his company "Banjo" is so on the nose that it would get laughed out of a writers room on a television sitcom.

  • Getting better! Hope springs

    Perfect blackbox definition.

  • The audit result also suggests a lack of scrutiny can undermine public trust in AI and the governments that deploy them.

    As the public does not trust AI or the governments deploying, or claiming to deploy, AI, and probably would not trust politically appointed scrutineers, it is hard to see how any more trust can be lost.

    Homer Simpson can probably outperform most current AI, even after a dozen Duff beers.

  • ....anything that references "AI" in 2021 is lying because THERE IS NO ACTUAL AI.

    There are very "clever" self-pruning algorithms, there are massive data sources that allow Hari-Seldon-ish predictions of otherwise soft subjects with reasonably high reliability for the GROUP (ie not individuals), there are even algorithms that attempt (generally execrably) to simulate creativity which is more about base-pattern-matching and repetition from source material with a slight random factor...but none of these things

  • That "industry definition" is the definition of the scam industry. Everybody in the IT industry knows that.

    But now guess what you are part of, dear author of TFA.
    Hint: It's not IT.

  • China had the only AI thatâ(TM)s not just a Buzz word
  • by groobly ( 6155920 ) on Wednesday April 07, 2021 @02:28PM (#61247922)

    No AI. Also, no human intelligence. Also, no white supremacy, at least in the classic, "legacy" definition. Of course, in the new and improved definition of "white supremacy," everything is connected, including AI, not to mention dog food and the color yellow.

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