Three years ago in Detroit, Robert Williams arrived home from work to find the police waiting at his front door, ready to arrest him for a crime he hadn’t committed.
Facial recognition technology used by officers had mistaken Williams for a suspect who had stolen thousands of dollars worth of watches.
The system linked a blurry CCTV image of the suspect with Williams in what is considered to be the first known case of wrongful arrest owing to the use of the AI-based technology.
The experience was “infuriating”, Mr Williams said.
“Imagine knowing you didn’t do anything wrong… And they show up to your home and arrest you in your driveway before you can really even get out the car and hug and kiss your wife or see your kids.”
Mr Williams, 45, was released after 30 hours in custody, and has filed a lawsuit, which is ongoing, against Detroit’s police department asking for compensation and a ban on the use of facial recognition software to identify suspects.
There are six known instances of wrongful arrest in the US, and the victims in all cases were black people.
Artificial intelligence reflects racial bias in society, because it is trained on real-world data.
A US government study published in 2019 found that facial recognition technology was between 10 and 100 times more likely to misidentify black people than white people.
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This is because the technology is trained on predominantly white datasets. This is because it doesn’t have as much information on what people of other races look like, so it’s more likely to make mistakes.
There are growing calls for that bias to be addressed if companies and policymakers want to use it for future decision-making.
One approach to solving the problem is to use synthetic data, which is generated by a computer to be more diverse than real-world datasets.
Chris Longstaff, vice president for product management at Mindtech, a Sheffield-based start-up, said that real-world datasets are inherently biased because of where the data is drawn from.
“Today, most of the AI solutions out there are using data scraped from the internet, whether that is from YouTube, Tik Tok, Facebook, one of the typical social media sites,” he said.
As a solution, Mr Longstaff’s team have created “digital humans” based on computer graphics.
These can vary in ethnicity, skin tone, physical attributes and age. The lab then combines some of this data with real-world data to create a more representative dataset to train AI models.
One of Mindtech’s clients is a construction company that wants to improve the safety of its equipment.
The lab uses the diverse data it has generated to train the company’s autonomous vehicles to recognise different types of people on the construction site so it can stop moving if someone is in their way.
Toju Duke, a responsible AI advisor and former programme manager at Google, said that using computer-generated, or “synthetic,” data to train AI models has its downsides.
“For someone like me, I haven’t travelled across the whole world, I haven’t met anyone from every single culture and ethnicity and country,” he said.
“So there’s no way I can develop something that would represent everyone in the world and that could lead to further offences.
“So we could actually have synthetic people or avatars that could have a mannerism that could be offensive to someone else from a different culture.”
The problem of racial bias is not unique to facial recognition technology, it has been recorded across different types of AI models.
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The vast majority of AI-generated images of “fast food workers” showed people with darker skin tones, even though US labour market figures show that the majority of fast food workers in the country are white, according to a Bloomberg experiment using Stability AI’s image generator earlier this year.
The company said it is working to diversify its training data.
A spokesperson for the Detroit police department said it has strict rules for using facial recognition technology and considers any match only as an “investigative lead” and not proof that a suspect has committed a crime.
“There are a number of checks and balances in place to ensure ethical use of facial recognition, including: use on live or recorded video is prohibited; supervisor oversight; and weekly and annual reporting to the Board of Police Commissioners on the use of the software,” they said.
FBI agents have boarded a boat managed by the same company whose cargo ship crashed into a Baltimore bridge and caused it to collapse.
The two companies in charge of the ship “recklessly cut corners” and ignored electrical problems on the vessel before the crash in March, alleged the US Justice Department on Wednesday.
Three days later, FBI agents boarded the Maersk Saltoro, a second ship managed by the same company, although authorities did not offer further details on the operation.
Six construction workers were killed when the Dali ship had a power outage and crashed into a support column on the Francis Scott Key Bridge.
The Justice Department alleged that mechanical and electrical systems on the massive ship had been improvised and improperly maintained which led to the power outage.
Authorities are seeking to recover more than $100 million the government spent to clear the underwater debris and reopen the city’s port, which was only fully reopened in June.
It could become the most expensive marine casualty case in history and the two Singapore-based companies, Synergy Marine Group and Grace Ocean, are trying to limit their legal liability.
The Justice Department said it will vigorously contest that limitation, arguing that vessel owners and operators need to be “deterred from engaging in such reckless and exceedingly harmful behaviour”.
Darrell Wilson, a Grace Ocean spokesperson, confirmed that the FBI and Coast Guard boarded the Maersk Saltoro in the Port of Baltimore on Saturday morning.
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Mr Wilson has previously said the owner and manager “look forward to our day in court to set the record straight” about the Justice Department’s lawsuit.
The Dali, which was stuck amid the wreckage of the collapse for months before it could be extricated, departed Virginia on Thursday afternoon en route to China on its first international voyage since the March 26 disaster.
The style choices of politicians have long been scrutinised by voters and the media.
Women have historically been subject to more inspection for their looks than men.
But all politicians are communicating through their style, according to two experts.
“We receive most of our information, many of us, through screens and through the visuals,” says Hazel Clark, professor of design and fashion at the Parsons School of Design in New York.
Democratic candidate Kamala Harris has been leaning into trouser suits.
“The well-fitted suit, the more masculine suit, is telling voters that she is not a politician’s wife, she is not the president’s wife, she is the president,” says Deirdre Clemente, professor of history at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas.
She wore a dark suit to make her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention.
The look “gives that sense of the legal profession, judges and authority. I think it was just saying ‘I’m here to be taken seriously, I can be your leader’,” says Ms Clark.
Many of the audience were wearing white, thought to be a reference to the suffragettes, who fought for women to have vote.
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“I think there’s a lot of weight in the choice of white in the audience of the DNC that night and her choice of a black suit was a power move,” Ms Clemente said.
Donald Trump has had a consistent style for many years – he’s known for his dark blue suit and silky red tie.
“He seems to have been wearing the same red tie since the 1970s. It seems to have gotten longer,” said Ms Clemente.
“It is his way of projecting power, confidence and stability.”
And his vice presidential pick JD Vance seems to have adapted his style to match.
“It’s putting on a uniform to say we are all one, we are all following this person. I think sameness, perhaps, with the party as well,” said Ms Clark.
“With Trump it’s almost become like a costume now.”
Harris often wears a pearl necklace, a reference to her college sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha, which was founded by black women at Howard University.
“Her wearing of the necklace is absolutely a shout-out to all the women who have supported her and that sorority is central to that,” said Ms Clemente.
The vice president is also known for her love of Converse shoes.
The trainers, which are associated with American basketball culture, “are a powerful cultural tool because what she’s saying is these shoes are just like the ones you have in your closet”.
Mr Trump and his supporters often wear the instantly recognisable red Make America Great Again baseball cap.
“The MAGA hat has an incredible amount of power, especially here in battleground states,” said Ms Clemente. “You see MAGA hats all around.”
Baseball caps are “ubiquitous in being used to signify something, it’s like having a slogan on your t-shirt”, says Ms Clark.
One accessory all US politicians are rarely seen without is an American flag pin badge on their lapel, which can be used to show patriotism.
It may also project a message that “we are all fighting for the same team” despite political differences, said Ms Clemente.
With seven weeks to go until the US goes to the polls, Sky’s dedicated team of correspondents goes on the road to gauge what citizens in key swing states make of the choice for president.
This week they focus on the second assassination attempt on Donald Trump.
Mark Stone travels to Florida where the foiled attack took place, while James Matthews has been finding out more about the suspected would-be assassin in his hometown of Greensboro, North Carolina.
Plus, Martha Kelner attended a Trump town hall in Flint, Michigan, to hear him speak for the first time after the attempt on his life, and asked voters if it will impact the way they vote in November.