DINT 123 - This Week in Tech: A Roundup of Insights on Tech, Race, and Gender

Sep 14, 2024

Is $300k Justice for a 10-Day Wrongful Detainment Involving AI?

Nijeer Parks, wrongly detained man misidentified by AI in 2019, won a $300,000 settlement from the Woodbridge, New Jersey police department, reports the New Jersey Law Journal.

You may remember Parks from our previous coverage on the false arrests and detainments of innocent people as a result of poor management of AI systems.

Woodbridge Police held Parks for 10 days. It all started when a man stole a candy bar and while escaping almost ran over a police officer. The man handed over a fake ID and was about to escape. Woodbridge Police took the photo from the ID and ran it in an AI database. The match produced Nijeer Parks as the suspect but the system warned the match had a score of 350 out of 1,000 (which is the ideal). The higher the score the more confident the match.

The system even issued a note with its findings according to Parks’s attorney Daniel Sexton, “this is an investigative lead only, not to be used as a basis of probable cause.”

Woodbridge Police promptly arrested Parks after he went to the police to clear up the mistake based on the arrest warrant he received in the mail.

Parks didn’t see freedom until 10 days later. He contacted Sexton to represent him in court and on September 10 Parks settled the lawsuit with the Woodbridge Police for $300,000.

What do you think? Did Parks settle for too little money? Should the settlement have included training for the Woodbridge Police Department? Will crime continue to drive the adoption of facial recognition technology?

–

Fast Company spoke to a partner at A VENTURE CAPITAL FUNDING COMPANY WHO ISN’T CONCERNED THAT WHAT HAPPENED TO THE FEARLESS FUND will happen to them. Conversely, Anu Duggal, founding partner of the Female Founders Fund, sees incremental increases in funding for women-led startups.

When asked about The Fearless Fund and their losing battle against anti-DEI advocates who TANKED THEIR EFFORTS TO GIVE GRANTS TO BLACK WOMEN BUSINESS OWNERS, Duggal said:

“We haven’t faced that directly. With Fearless Fund, [the activism] was more focused on a grant program that they had started. We’re aware of what’s happening, but we haven’t directly been impacted at all. There are so many other things to be concerned about that this is not top of mind.”

In other news, THE FEARLESS FUND ENDED ITS GRANT PROGRAM IN A SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT WITH ED BLUM, the conservative attorney and anti-diversity advocate who brought the lawsuit alleging discrimination.

–

OpEd

“Our participation in the AI, blockchain, quantum physics, and Metaverse revolutions will determine our future place in the world’s economy.”

So starts an article by Tyrone D. Taborn in the STEM community’s magazine, US Black Engineer Information Technology.

Taborn posits an optimistic view of financial wealth for the Black community, embracing emerging tech and financial systems such as digital currencies and decentralized finance (blockchain).

It’s a formidable article but the general take is Black American can either remain in a consumer-based economy or emerge as a tech entrepreneurial society. It’s a refreshing perspective that tech isn’t able to address. The switch from consumer to entrepreneur requires a change in mindset, values, and self care. Black people who are descendants of enslaved Africans in the U.S. suffer a collective trauma and the effects of that trauma influence our decision making, for the majority of us.

Fresh clothes, new cars, sparkly jewelry: These all combat the ugliness of our origins in the U.S. Until we turn around and face the collective trauma, we’re not going to enact Taborn’s valid idea.

Let’s heal.

–

Going to the bodega for a chopped cheese in New York City? WATCH OUT, YOU’RE BEING MONITORED BY A FACIAL RECOGNITION SYSTEM, reports media outlet PIX11. That’s thanks to New York state’s facial recognition pilot program. The program also funds installation of a panic button in each bodega, which could be helpful in alerting authorities to violent crimes in progress such as the murder of 15-year-old Lesandro “Junior” Guzman-Feliz outside of a Bronx bodega.

–