Australian Terrorism Prediction Tool Disparately Impacts Persons with Autism

May 12, 2023

An independent report revealed that the Vera-2R terrorism risk prediction tool, based on dubious evidence, categorized autism as a potential threat factor. This misclassification raises concerns over the tool's overall accuracy and credibility, with serious implications for its use. The HISPI Project Cerebellum TAIM highlights the importance of guardrails in AI development to prevent such incidents.

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Matched TAIM controls

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

MEASURE 2.6 — similarity 0.708, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MEASURE 3.1 — similarity 0.688, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MEASURE 3.2 — similarity 0.680, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Alleged deployer: new-south-wales-government, australian-federal-government
Alleged developer: unspecified
Alleged harmed parties: people-with-autism, lawyers-and-other-experts-who-were-not-informed-of-the-tool's-limitations, individuals-assessed-as-high-risk-based-on-the-flawed-criteria, general-public

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/588

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.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.