On “The Palestine Laboratory”

A large part of Israel’s economy and global influence are dependent on its military-technology complex that not only fuels the ongoing genocide in Gaza but is also exported to facilitate oppression around the world. In this thorough 2023 book, journalist Anthony Loewenstein makes explicit how Israel’s military industrial complex profits exorbitantly from exporting technologies “battle-tested” on occupied Gaza and the West-Bank.

Continue reading “On “The Palestine Laboratory””

Racist Technology in Action: The World Bank’s Poverty Targeting Algorithms Deprives People of Social Security

A system funded by the World Bank to assess who is most in need of support, is reported to not only be faulty but also discriminatory and depriving many of their right to social security. In a recent report titled “Automated Neglect: How The World Bank’s Push to Allocate Cash Assistance Using Algorithms Threatens Rights” Human Rights Watch outlines how specifically the system used in Joran should be abandoned.

Continue reading “Racist Technology in Action: The World Bank’s Poverty Targeting Algorithms Deprives People of Social Security”

Women of colour are leading the charge against racist AI

In this Dutch-language piece for De Groene Amsterdammer, Marieke Rotman offers an accessible introduction of the main voices, both internationally and in the Netherlands, tirelessly fighting against racism and discrimination in AI-systems. Not coincidentally, most of the people doing this labour are women of colour. The piece guides you through their impressive work and leading perspectives on the dynamics of racism and technology.

Continue reading “Women of colour are leading the charge against racist AI”

Racist Technology in Action: Image recognition is still not capable of differentiating gorillas from Black people

If this title feels like a deja-vu it is because you most likely have, in fact, seen this before (perhaps even in our newsletter). It was back in 2015 that the controversy first arose when Google released image recognition software that kept mislabelling Black people as gorillas (read here and here).

Continue reading “Racist Technology in Action: Image recognition is still not capable of differentiating gorillas from Black people”

What problems are AI-systems even solving? “Apparently, too few people ask that question”

In this interview with Felienne Hermans, Professor Computer Science at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, she discusses the sore lack of divesity in the white male-dominated world of programming, the importance of teaching people how to code and, the problematic uses of AI-systems.

Continue reading “What problems are AI-systems even solving? “Apparently, too few people ask that question””

Stories of everyday life with AI in the global majority

This collection by the Data & Society Research Institute sheds an intimate and grounded light on what impact AI-systems can have. The guiding question that connects all of the 13 non-fiction pieces in Parables of AI in/from the Majority world: An Anthology is what stories can be told about a world in which solving societal issues is more and more dependent on AI-based and data-driven technologies? The book, edited by Rigoberto Lara Guzmán, Ranjit Singh and Patrick Davison, through narrating ordinary, everyday experiences in the majority world, slowly disentangles the global and unequally distributed impact of digital technologies.

Continue reading “Stories of everyday life with AI in the global majority”

What’s at stake with losing (Black) Twitter and moving to (white) Mastodon?

The immanent demise of Twitter after Elon Musk’s takeover sparked an exodus of people leaving the platform, which is only expected to increase. The significant increase in hate speech, and general hostile atmosphere created by the erratic decrees by it’s owner (such as Trump’s reinstatement) made, in the New Yorker writer Jelani Cobb’s words, “remaining completely untenable”. This, often vocal, movement of people from the platform has sparked a debate on what people stand to loose and what the alternative is.

Continue reading “What’s at stake with losing (Black) Twitter and moving to (white) Mastodon?”

Racist Technology in Action: Let’s make an avatar! Of sexy women and tough men of course

Just upload a selfie in the “AI avatar app” Lensa and it will generate a digital portrait of you. Think, for example, of a slightly more fit or beautiful version of yourself as an astronaut or the lead singer in a band. If you are a man that is. As it turns out, for women, and especially women with Asian heritage, Lensa churns out pornified, sexy and skimpily clothed avatars.

Continue reading “Racist Technology in Action: Let’s make an avatar! Of sexy women and tough men of course”

Report: How police surveillance tech reinforces abuses of power

The UK organisation No Tech for Tyrants (NT4T) has published an extensive report on the use of surveillance technologies by the police in the UK, US, Mexico, Brazil, Denmark and India, in collaboration with researchers and activists from these countries. The report, titled “Surveillance Tech Perpetuates Police Abuse of Power” examines the relation between policing and technology through in-depth case studies.

Continue reading “Report: How police surveillance tech reinforces abuses of power”

Racist Technology in Action: How hiring tools can be sexist and racist

One of the classic examples of how AI systems can reinforce social injustice is Amazon’s A.I. hiring tool. In 2014, Amazon built an ´A.I. powered´ tool to assess resumes and recommend the top candidates that would go on to be interviewed. However, the tool turned out to be very biased, systematically preferring men over women.

Continue reading “Racist Technology in Action: How hiring tools can be sexist and racist”

Meta forced to change its advertisement algorithm to address algorithmic discrimination

In his New York Times article, Mike Isaac describes how Meta is implementing a new system to automatically check whether the housing, employment and credit ads it hosts are shown to people equally. This is a move following a 111,054 US dollar fine the US Justice Department has issued Meta because its ad systems have been shown to discriminate its users by, amongst other things, excluding black people from seeing certain housing ads in predominately white neighbourhoods. This is the outcome of a long process, which we have written about previously.

Continue reading “Meta forced to change its advertisement algorithm to address algorithmic discrimination”

Racist Techology in Action: Beauty is in the eye of the AI

Where people’s notion of beauty is often steeped in cultural preferences or plain prejudice, the objectivity of an AI-system would surely allow it to access a more universal conception of beauty – or so thought the developers of Beauty.AI. Alex Zhavoronkov, who consulted in the development of the Beaut.AI-system, described the dystopian motivation behind the system clearly: “Humans are generally biased and there needs to be a robot to provide an impartial opinion. Beauty.AI is the first step in a much larger story, in which a mobile app trained to evaluate perception of human appearance will evolve into a caring personal assistant to help users look their best and retain their youthful looks.”

Continue reading “Racist Techology in Action: Beauty is in the eye of the AI”

The Dutch government wants to continue to spy on activists’ social media

Investigative journalism of the NRC brought to light that the Dutch NCTV (the National Coordinator for Counterterrorism and Security) uses fake social media accounts to track Dutch activists. The agency also targets activists working in the social justice or anti-discrimination space and tracks their work, sentiments and movements through their social media accounts. This is a clear example of how digital communication allows governments to intensify their surveillance and criminalisation of political opinions outside the mainstream.

Continue reading “The Dutch government wants to continue to spy on activists’ social media”

Racism and technology in the Dutch municipal elections

Last week in the Netherlands all focus was on the municipal elections. Last Wednesday, the city councils were chosen that will govern for the next four years. The elections this year were mainly characterised by a historical low turnout and the traditional overall wins for local parties. However, the focus of the Racism and Technology Center is, of course, on whether the new municipal councils and governments will put issues on the intersection of social justice and technology on the agenda.

Continue reading “Racism and technology in the Dutch municipal elections”

Bits of Freedom speaks to the Dutch Senate on discriminatory algorithms

In an official parliamentary investigative committee, the Dutch Senate is investigating how new regulation or law-making processes can help combat discrimination in the Netherlands. The focus of the investigative committee is on four broad domains: labour market, education, social security and policing. As a part of these wide investigative efforts the senate is hearing from a range of experts and civil society organisations. Most notably, one contribution stands out from the perspective of racist technology: Nadia Benaissa from Bits of Freedom highlighted the dangers of predictive policing and other uses of automated systems in law enforcement.

Continue reading “Bits of Freedom speaks to the Dutch Senate on discriminatory algorithms”

Nani Jansen Reventlow receives Dutch prize for championing privacy and digital rights

The Dutch digital rights NGO Bits of Freedom has awarded Nani Jansen Reventlow the “Felipe Rodriguez Award” for her outstanding work championing digital rights and her crucial efforts in decolonising the field. In this (Dutch language) podcast she is interviewed by Bits of Freedom’s Inge Wannet about her strategic litigation work and her ongoing fight to decolonise the digital rights field.

Continue reading “Nani Jansen Reventlow receives Dutch prize for championing privacy and digital rights”

Racist Technology in Action: Uber’s racially discriminatory facial recognition system firing workers

This example of racist technology in action combines racist facial recognition systems with exploitative working conditions and algorithmic management to produce a perfect example of how technology can exacarbate both economic precarity and racial discrimination.

Continue reading “Racist Technology in Action: Uber’s racially discriminatory facial recognition system firing workers”

‘Race-blind’ content moderation disadvantages Black users

Over the past months a slew of leaks from the Facebook whistleblower, Frances Haugen, has exposed how the company was aware of the disparate and harmful impact of its content moderation practices. Most damning is that in the majority of instances, Facebook failed to address these harms. In this Washington Post piece, one of the latest of such revelations is discussed in detail: Even though Facebook knew it would come at the expense of Black users, its algorithm to detect and remove hate speech was programmed to be ‘race-blind’.

Continue reading “‘Race-blind’ content moderation disadvantages Black users”

Amnesty’s grim warning against another ‘Toeslagenaffaire’

In its report of the 25 of October, Amnesty slams the Dutch government’s use of discriminatory algorithms in the child benefits schandal (toeslagenaffaire) and warns that the likelihood of such a scandal occurring again is very high. The report is aptly titled ‘Xenophobic machines – Discrimination through unregulated use of algorithms in the Dutch childcare benefits scandal’ and it conducts a human rights analysis of a specific sub-element of the scandal: the use of algorithms and risk models. The report is based on the report of the Dutch data protection authority and several other government reports.

Continue reading “Amnesty’s grim warning against another ‘Toeslagenaffaire’”

Photo filters are keeping colorism alive

Many people use filters on social media to ‘beautify’ their pictures. In this article, Tate Ryan-Mosley discusses how these beauty filters can perpetuate colorism. Colorism has a long and complicated history, but can be summarised as a preference for whiter skin as opposed to darker skin. Ryan-Mosley explains that “though related to racism, it’s distinct in that it can affect people regardless of their race, and can have different effects on people of the same background.” The harmful effects of colorism, ranging from discrimination to mental health issues or the use of toxic skin-lightening products, are found across races and cultures.

Continue reading “Photo filters are keeping colorism alive”

Racist Technology in Action: White preference in mortage-approval algorithms

A very clear example of racist technology was exposed by Emmanuel Martinez and Lauren Kirchner in an article for the Markup. Algorithms used by a variety of American banks and lenders to automatically assess or advice on mortgages display clear racial disparity. In national data from the United States in 2019 they found that “loan applicants of color were 40%–80% more likely to be denied than their White counterparts. In certain metro areas, the disparity was greater than 250%.”

Continue reading “Racist Technology in Action: White preference in mortage-approval algorithms”

Government: Stop using discriminatory algorithms

In her Volkskrant opinion piece Nani Jansen Reventlow makes a forceful argument for the government to stop using algorithms that lead to discrimination and exclusion. Reventlow, director of the Digital Freedom Fund, employs a myriad of examples to show how disregarding the social nature of technological systems can lead to reproducing existing social injustices such as racism or discrimination. The automatic fraud detection system SyRI that was ruled in violation of fundamental rights (and its dangerous successor Super SyRI) is discussed, as well as the racist proctoring software we wrote about earlier.

Continue reading “Government: Stop using discriminatory algorithms”

Covid-19 data: making racialised inequality in the Netherlands invisible

The CBS, the Dutch national statistics authority, issued a report in March showing that someone’s social economic status is a clear risk factor for dying of Covid-19. In an insightful piece, researchers Linnet Taylor and Tineke Broer criticise this report and show that the way in which the CBS collects and aggragates data on Covid-19 cases and deaths obfuscates the full extent of racialised or ethnic inequality in the impact of the pandemic.

Continue reading “Covid-19 data: making racialised inequality in the Netherlands invisible”

Racist Technology in Action: Proctoring software disadvantaging students of colour in the Netherlands

In an opinion piece in Parool, The Racism and Technology Center wrote about how Dutch universities use proctoring software that uses facial recognition technology that systematically disadvantages students of colour (see the English translation of the opinion piece). Earlier the center has written on the racial bias of these systems, leading to black students being excluded from exams or being labeled as frauds because the software did not properly recognise their faces as a face. Despite the clear proof that Procorio disadvantages students of colour, the University of Amsterdam has still used Proctorio extensively in this June’s exam weeks.

Continue reading “Racist Technology in Action: Proctoring software disadvantaging students of colour in the Netherlands”

Why Europe needs a new vocabulary to talk about race

In this article for Algorithm Watch, Nicolas Kayser-Bril highlights an important issue facing Europe in the fight against racist technologies: we lack the words to talk about racism. He shows why Europeans need a new vocabulary and discourse to understand and discuss racist AI systems. For example, concepts such as ‘Racial Justice’ have no part in the EU’s anti-discrimination agenda and ‘ethnicity’ is not recognised as a proxy for race in a digital context. The lack of this vocabulary greatly harms our current ability to challenge and dismantle these systems and, crucially, the root of racism.

Continue reading “Why Europe needs a new vocabulary to talk about race”

At the mercy of the TikTok algorithm?

In this article for the Markup, Dara Kerr offers an interesting insight in the plight of TikTok’ers who try to earn a living on the platform. TikTok’s algorithm, or how it decides what content gets a lot of exposure, is notoriously vague. With ever changing policies and metrics, Kerr recounts how difficult it is to build up and retain a following on the platform. This vagueness does not only create difficulty for creators trying to monetize their content, but also leaves more room for TikTok to suppress or spread content at will.

Continue reading “At the mercy of the TikTok algorithm?”

Google blocks advertisers from targeting Black Lives Matter

In this piece for Markup, Leon Yin and Aaron Sankin expose how Google bans advertisers from targeting terms such as “Black lives matter”, “antifascist” or “Muslim fashion”. At the same time, keywords such as “White lives matter” or “Christian fashion” are not banned. When they raised this striking discrepancy with Google, its response was to fix the discrepancies between religions and races by blocking all such terms, as well as by blocking even more social justice related keywords such as “I can’t breathe” or “LGBTQ”. Blocking these terms for ad placement can reduce the revenue for YouTuber’s fighting for these causes. Yin and Sankin place this policy in stark contrast to Google’s support for the Black Lives Matter movement.

Continue reading “Google blocks advertisers from targeting Black Lives Matter”

Proudly powered by WordPress | Theme: Baskerville 2 by Anders Noren.

Up ↑