The “Extreme Vetting Initiative” or “Extreme Vetting Initiative” is a new idea that officially informs us that the Trump administration does not understand technology, or does not think exactly what it can cause or thinks and does not care about it.
The American Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, sent last June, sent a letter describing an initiative to “create an AI application that can automate, collect, and rationalize the current assessment process” of migrants who wish to enter U.S. soil.
According to the letter, ICE's current methodology does not provide sufficient "high-value, reliable information for further investigations" as it comes from "US immigration lawyers or federal courts."
Extreme Vetting Initiative: The AI of digital discrimination
ICE officials, in short, would like someone from the technology sector to create a machine‑learning application that gathers information that can be used for prosecutions or for denying entry to migrants.
Extreme Vetting Initiative: In a nutshell, the service gives us the definition of a biased AI.
This application could possibly have a deep learning network capable of creating correlations between different data. In order to train such a network, data from the DHS (Department of Homeland Security) or ICE could be used. Both agencies have data on people who are targeted by any intelligence service (and not only), regardless of who evaluated them and by what criteria.
A group of 54 prominent scientists and engineers today sent a separate letter to the Department of Homeland Security asking them to abandon the AI plan for screening immigrants. In their letter, they state:
“In plain words, there are no computational methods that provide reliable or objective assessments of the characteristics that ICE seeks to measure.
As far as we know, there is no machine capable of determining whether an individual is likely to commit a crime, nor is there any AI that can determine a person's intentions through the collection of data from social media.”
A ProPublica article (Machine Bias), which was a Pulitzer finalist, states:
“There is software used across the country to predict future criminals. And it is biased against black people.
It would therefore be logical to believe that creating a similar AI that can decide whether entry into the country can be allowed for an individual is not very different from the biased software that decides harsher penalties for black people.”
We should note that among the 56 scientists and researchers who signed the letter for the DHS is a mix of academics and experts from companies such as Google and Microsoft.
IBM said in The Hill:
We have clarified our values. We are facing discrimination and will not undertake any work on the development of a registry of Muslim Americans.
Thus, after the public placement, it is very likely that IBM will not help the US government.
However, no technology company should allow a system that would lead to discrimination of people. The use of AI that can marginalize and violate political rights is contrary to the very idea of research and progress.
