The European Parliament Votes Against The Future Of ‘Minority Report’
The majority of European parliamentarians have voted against the use of facial recognition and ‘predictive policing’ with Artificial Intelligence.
It sounds more like a science fiction movie, but there are already tools based on machine learning and AI that promise to be able to “predict crime”, as the “precognitives” could do in Tom Cruise’s blockbuster, Minority Report .
The creators of these platforms assure that the predictive analysis is pure and hard mathematics, based on real data such as the location and type of past crimes; But there are serious doubts not only about its effectiveness, but about the possible racist use of this technology in conjunction with facial recognition.
This and other related issues have been discussed in the European Parliament ending in a resolution that, although not binding, will mark the path of the EU on future issues that will undoubtedly have to be done. Like it or not, Europe will have to consider sooner rather than later if it follows in the footsteps of China and the United States , where these technologies are already being tested and used by the public.
For now, this is a “great victory for European citizens”, according to the Bulgarian socialist Petar Vitanov, who presented the proposal. It has received a lot of support, after “almost all” political groups have agreed to a complete ban on facial recognition.
The resolution calls for this technology to be banned from public sites, in addition to the elimination of private facial databases , an addition that seems especially aimed at US companies that are already selling this technology. But the resolution also looks at China and its ‘social credit’, a system that gives a score to the citizen depending on behavior and offenses recorded with cameras and AI; Parliament supports the creation of a law that expressly prohibits such practices.
