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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.

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[–] [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.