
‘Thousands of Dollars for Something I Didn’t Do’
Randal Reid spent 6 days in jail after being stopped in Atlanta and falsely accused of stealing purses in Louisiana, a state he’s never even been to. His case reveals issues with facial recognition software. While they appear neutral on the surface, they can be used to imprison the innocent and prop up already racist practices in law enforcement. It’s a case of mistaken identity that traces back to the sheriff department’s contract with Clearview AI; artificial intelligence conflated Reid’s face with the one on the security footage. Rashad Robinson, president of Color Of Change, says we shouldn’t brush such incidents off as honest mistakes. New technologies, he says, can exacerbate already existing racist tendencies. “If facial recognition was misclassifying white people, white men or white women, it would not be on the shelf. Some of us and some of our communities are expendable.” That’s what the group is fighting to change.