The increasing use of generative artificial intelligence by police poses a threat to the civil liberties of Americans, warns the ACLU.
Artificial intelligence tools eliminate fundamental aspects of the judicial system in the country.
The ACLU has issued a warning about the growing use of artificial intelligence in the country’s police forces. In a six-page report published on December 10, the leading civil rights group in the United States points out that the adoption of generative AI technologies, such as writing tools and chatbots, represents an disproportionate technological advancement that could threaten American civil liberties.
One of the main concerns is the use of Draft One, a controversial AI tool that helps police officers draft reports based on audio from body cameras and that utilizes OpenAI's GPT-4 model. Over the past year, several police departments across the nation have been testing AI tools, including Draft One, and their numbers are expected to increase as cities in the U.S. view these solutions as a response to budgetary and staffing constraints.
Experts have expressed their concerns about the integration of this technology, given that police reports are fundamental to judicial decision-making, from investigation to sentencing. Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, a legal expert, mentions that the process of drafting a justification, committing to its truthfulness, and making it public is a mechanism of control over police power, an aspect that the ACLU highlights in its analysis.
The ACLU report identifies four main areas of concern, emphasizing the need for an accountability process in human-drafted reports, as described by Ferguson. The organization also underscores the uncertainty caused by biases and hallucinations inherent to the technology, in addition to questioning the transparency of these processes to the public and their implications for data privacy. According to the ACLU, relying more on the interpretation of generative AI tools than on human memory and the subjective observations of an officer could undermine a fair judicial process.
The ACLU indicates that if AI is to become the new ally of the police, its use should come after the recording of human memory. It suggests that AI tools could transcribe the verbal narratives of officers, which should be presented for review alongside the reports. However, despite these recommendations from civil rights groups, leaders in AI technology continue to invest steadily in police and military applications.
The document concludes by reminding that police reports are crucial in the justice system, as they are central to criminal proceedings that determine an individual's innocence or guilt and are often the only official account of an incident. The ACLU emphasizes that AI report-writing technology removes essential human elements from police procedures and warns that it is too new, untested, unreliable, opaque, and biased to be integrated into the criminal justice system.
