Technology

60101 readers

2413 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

462

AI tenant-screening tool SafeRent pays $2.28 million settlement for being massively racist (pivot-to-ai.com)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

31 comments fedilink hide all child comments

SafeRent is a machine learning black box for landlords. It gives landlords a numerical rating of potential tenants and a yes/no result on whether to rent to them.

In May 2022, Massachusetts housing voucher recipients and the Community Action Agency of Somerville sued the company, claiming SafeRent gave Black and Hispanic rental applicants with housing vouchers disproportionately lower scores.

The tenants had no visibility into how the algorithm scored them. Appeals were rejected on the basis that this was what the computer output said.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Residential renters generally don't use a real estate agent.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

A letting agent maybe?

In any case it's their job to be racist, not an AI.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

I'm not certain if we have letting agents in the US. I certainly have never used one, and I've rented in at least 30+ states. I've lived in 49/50, but that's counting while living with my parents, so I'm not going through the effort to figure out the exact number.

I would agree with your humorous throwaway, but that is actually the reality of the US unfortunately.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

They do where I live.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Well that isn't the US, clearly. The article is about the US.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

And my comment is clearly about whichever job is managing the task being replaced by AI. What does it matter if you think the job title is wrong?