The Ethic Stance of Predicting Criminality

It is known fact that technological progress and research have been on the rise recently as more
and more researches are being done to help make our way of lives better and more affordable
and one this aspect of the development is in ways to help reduce crimes being committed. A
research team from McMaster University in Canada and Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China
have proven that computers, with the help of facial recognition database, could help detect a
potential or current criminal. The basis of this argument is that a computer algorithm has no
emotions, race preference etc., and eliminates the variable of meta-accuracy all together. The
algorithms basically uses very delicate and elusive tones in facial characteristics and structures
that correlate to distinctive personal traits

This of course has raised a lot of questions over the ethics and efficiency of this method in the
world. The first ethical problem with this method of identifying criminal is how this technology
would be influenced by prejudice, racial profile and stereotypes. This situation is particular true
in a world where the wrong people are already being convicted even with all the possible
advanced methods of solving crimes available.

Certain races, such as minorities in first world countries, are looked to as being more depraved
than others and this is known as racial profiling. Racial profiling is harmful to society as it gives
the police a bad image as the minority communities are alienated and this in turn prevents
proper communication between the minorities from the police and is dangerous as a lower
standard of criminal evidence is needed to prove minorities guilty than what would for needed
for whites and this lower standard of evidence can easily lead to violence to minorities. It is true
of course that the computers themselves wont possess these problems but every code or
algorithm is created by humans who one way or the other would possess bias. Taking this into
consideration, we have an example of a program that is set to meet certain standards and with
certain features that used to say if a person is a negative or positive

Another problem is the issue that comes with putting our safety in the hands of Artificial
Intelligence and technology. It has been known over the years that they has been concerns and
criticisms over how much we have become over dependent on technology especially Artificial
Intelligence to run our day to day lives. The argument put in place for such dependence in A.I is
that they are more accurate and provide less bias than the human mind. These two statements
are of course true but the negative aspects include the fact that technology is open to
manipulation and hacking and tin the wrong hands, this can be used to do more harm than
good.
With the introduction of A.I we also get the situation were lesser and lesser jobs in law
enforcement would be available for humans. This is in turn would lead to more unemployment
and as we have known throughout history this has led to negative impact politically,
economically and socially. Also in relation to comparing humans and technology, the case can
be made technology doesnt possess the kind of experience that humans do. Technology is only
as good what is programmed to do and are not able to act any different from what they are
programmed to do. Humans on the other hand can generally adapt to change when a situation
demands one to act in way different from the usual.

A.I also incurs maintenance and repair cost, need to be updated to suit the changing
requirements, and made smarter. In case of a breakdown, the cost of repair may be very high.
Procedures to restore lost code or data may be time-consuming and costly.

It should of course be noted this technology is still in it infant change and if the 90 percent level
from the research is anything to go by, we are off to a great start. But as Kate Crawford, an AI
researcher for Microsoft for said2, as we move further into an era of police body cameras and
predictive policing, its important to critically assess the problematic and unethical uses of
machine learning to make spurious correlations

REFERENCES
1Wu, X. (2016, November 13). Automated Inference on Criminality using Face Images. Retrieved from
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1611.04135v1.pdf