Airbnb's Trustworthiness Algorithm Allegedly Banned Users without Explanation, and Discriminated against Sex Workers

July 1, 2017

Airbnb has been accused of employing an algorithm to assess user trustworthiness based on personality and behavioral traits. This alleged practice has led to unclear bans and discrimination against sex workers, raising concerns about safe and secure AI practices.

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Matched TAIM controls

Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

MEASURE 2.6 — similarity 0.713, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 1.6 — similarity 0.697, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MEASURE 4.2 — similarity 0.691, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Alleged deployer: airbnb
Alleged developer: airbnb, trooly
Alleged harmed parties: sex-workers, airbnb-users

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/183

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

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