rhythms that match people to resources and the reason i think of them as a digital poor house is because that the decision that we made in 820 to build actual poor houses was a decision that public service systems should 1st and foremost be moral thermometers that they should act to decide who is most deserving of receiving their basic human rights the genius studies into the automation of public services in the united states points to developments in the late sixty's and seventy's along with the civil rights movement came a push for welfare rights people are forced to live in the most human situations because of poverty african-americans and unmarried women who were previously bought from receiving public funds could now demand state support when they need to do. well technology was touted as a way to distribute financial aid more efficiently it almost immediately began to serve as

a tool to limit the number of people getting support so you have this moment in history where there's a recession and a backlash against social spending and social movement that's winning successes that and discriminatory treatment and there really is no way to close the roles they can't close the roles the way they had in the past which is just discriminating against people and that's the moment we see these tools start to be integrated into public assistance i think it's really important to understand that history i think too often we think of the systems s. just simple administrative upgrades sort of natural and inevitable but in fact there are systems that make really important consequential political decisions for us and they were from the beginning supposed to solve political problems among them the power and the solidarity of poor and working people in the only 900. close to

50 percent of those living below the poverty line in the united states receive some form of cash welfare from the government today it's less than 10 percent in public assistance the assumption of many folks who have not had direct experience with these systems is that they're set up to help you succeed they are not in fact set up to say help you succeed and they're very complicated systems that are very diversionary that are needlessly complex and that are incredibly stigmatizing and emotionally very difficult so it shouldn't then surprise us that a tool that makes that system faster. more efficient and more cost effective furthers that purpose of diverting people from the resources that they that they need having algorithms make decisions such as who gets financial aid who has money that the government has caused concern among many different groups but what's causing a full on panic for some is the fact that algorithms are being used to actually

make predictions about people one of the most controversial examples is the correctional offender management profiling for alternative sanctions it's a bit of a mouthful but it sure is compass and it's an algorithm that's been used in courtrooms across the country to assist judges during sentencing now of course algorithms caught way up arguments analyze evidence or assess remorse but what they are be used for is to produce something known as a risk assessment school to predict the likelihood of a defendant committing another crime in the future the school is then used by judges to help them determine who should be released and who should be detained pending trial. now the judge has to consider a couple factors here there's public safety and flight risk on the one hand but then there are the real costs social and financial of detention on the defendant on their family on the other now historically what happens is the judge looks into the defendant's eyes and tries to say ok you're a high risk person or you're

a low risk person i trust your i don't trust you now what algorithms are helping us to do is make those decisions better the compass algorithm was brought in to offset balance out inconsistency is in human judgment the assumption being of course that a piece of code would always be less biased and listen to prejudice however compass is faced several criticisms primarily accusations of racial bias inaccuracy and lack of transparency in 2016 a man named eric loomis sentenced to 6 years in prison took his case to the wood sconce and state supreme court his allegation was that the use of compass violated his right to due process it made it impossible for him to appeal his sentence since the algorithm is a black box impenetrable unquestionable. eric loomis didn't get very far the supreme court ruled the use of compass in his sentencing was legal the verdict tell

about revealed the ways in which the ever increasing use of algorithms is being normalized the court had a funny argument saying that nobody knows where these decisions are coming from and so it's it's ok you know it's not that the state has a particular advantage over the defendant but that everyone is that this sort of equal playing field and it's not that there's an informational advantage for one side or the other to me i find that somewhat dissatisfied and i do think that in these high stakes decisions particular in the criminal justice system we don't just want to have an equal playing field no one knows but i think we need to have an equal playing field of everybody you know because we need to have this transparency built a system for the record equivalent the company that sells compass software has defended its algorithm it points to research commissions that the company meets industry standards for fantasy and accuracy. what a compass most of the privately developed algorithms meet acceptable standards for

transparency is another question even when they are used in the provision of public services algorithms are often closed to the public they cannot be scrutinized regardless of that sharon says that in certain cases he would still be comfortable being judged by a group just algorithm so i do think it's true that many of the people in the criminal justice system are the most disadvantaged and the reality is they probably don't have a lot of say in their futures in their fates and how these algorithms are going to evaluate them. whether this would happen if more powerful people are being judged by these algorithms i don't know now me personally i would rather be judged by a well designed algorithm a human in part because i believe the statistical. methods for something risky in fact are better than humans in many situations and it can at least one as

well designed eliminate a lot of these biases that that human decision makers often exhibit the united states has a massive racial discrimination problem and public services that's real so it is really understandable when agencies want to create tools that can help them keep an eye on frontline decision making in order to maybe identified discriminatory decision making and corrected the problem is that that's not actually the point at which discriminated discrimination is entering the system and this is one of my huge concerns about these kinds of systems is they tend to only understand discrimination as something that is the result of an individual who is making and rational decisions. and they don't these systems are not as good at identifying bias that is systemic and. actual the promise of algorithms is that we can mitigate

the by sees that human decision makers always have you know we always were always responding to the way somebody looks to us we somebody acts and even if we try as hard as we can and if we really have these good intentions of the try to just focus on what matters i think is exceptionally difficult now that again is a promise of algorithms the reality is much more complicated the reality is that algorithms are trained on past human decisions they're built by fallible humans them selves in so there's still this possibility that that by sees creep into the development and application of these algorithms but certainly the promise is that we can least make the situation better than it currently is one of the things i'm really concerned about about these systems is that they seem to be part of a philosophy that increasingly sees human decision making as black box and unknowable and computer decision making as transparent and accountable. and that to me is really frightening because of course computer decision making is not as

objective and is not as unbiased as it seems at 1st glance we build bias into our technologies just like we build them into our right we teach our technologies to discriminate. but on the other hand people's decision making is actually not that opaque we can ask people about why they're making the decisions they're making that can be part of their professional development and i think this idea that human decision making is somehow unknowable is a sort of ethical abandonment of the possibility to grow and to change that we really really need as a society to truly address the systemic roots of racism and classism and sexism in our society so it feels to me like we're saying will never understand why people make discriminatory decisions so let's just let the computer make it and i think

that's a mistake i think that's it a tragic mistake that will lead to a lot of suffering for a lot of people. so going back to the question that started us on this journey can we trust elders that's the biggest thing i've learned from speaking with russia the genius and many others is that i've actually got the question right. it isn't really so much about whether algorithms are trustworthy it's more about the quality of the dot of the feet in egypt it's those designing controlling. human biases human imperfections that's what we see reflected in our algorithms and without better oversight we risk reinforcing our prejudices and social inequalities. that you often own. our program to a shame that the past is the future that we want as well and by the past that's

often things the veil of stigma and bias and stereotypes and rejection and discrimination and really what we need is to create systems the allow for. a new future scenario is that different from the old of course we can build better tools out there and make tools and i see them everywhere that i go but what makes a difference about good tools about just tools is building those tools with a broader set of values from the very beginning so not just efficiency not just cost savings but dignity and self-determination and justice and fairness and accountability and fairer process and all of those things that we really care about as a democracy have to be built in at the beginning from step one in every single tool .

we're actually getting our hands on the data we're analyzing the data. now one thing that we've done is we try to make as much of the state of the old bulls possible so to encourage people to look at. this and one of our one of our projects is called the stanford open policing project we released lots of data in the criminal justice system we released code for people to play with the data and i encourage everyone to look at that and try to understand what's going on. you know maybe they'll discover a pattern that you consider ourselves my biggest piece of advice is to never underestimate your influence on. you know you may be fighting some machine. some computer system that you've never been able to mate let's say to his him inflicted huge homeless suffering but no words can make government scared your voices combined can make said. minutes in court sit up and pay attention to gather we can shape the way these tools are created and the ways that they

impact as a political community if we want better outcomes from these systems we have to we have to claim our space as decision making and decision makers at these tables. and we can't do that if we think that these technologies are somehow gods they're built just just the way we build our kids we build these technologies and we have a right to be in dialogue with them. think of some of the biggest companies in the world today all of them. with algorithms at the mall that we used to. produce we're in the midst of a great race and big tech companies are on the chase and fires are rising on a wealth of information and we are in the sections of a 5 part series ali re-examined where the corporations are calling.

our own on a. put

. their own hendrik crisis is now in its 2nd year more than $700000.00 and a space and stateless after fleeing military led massacres and me and mom and they still don't think it's safe to go home follow their plight with special coverage

and reports on al-jazeera. talk to al-jazeera we ask what guarantees would you give to the people will be attending the minimal workshop we listen i'm supposed to explain apologize for someone is also terrorizing me we meet with global newsmakers and talk about the stories that matter on the show to 0. iran's top diplomat suggests they could work with new proposals to save the nuclear deal. i don't know about this and this is

a disease or live from doha also coming up with wildfires burn across the amazon and brazil's president says they're too big to put out. it's a no from france to reworking brags that emanuel mccrone tells boris johnson he must respect what's already been signed off. un investigators say the scale of sexual violence against little demonstrates an intent to commit genocide. iran has again struck a conciliatory tone on the unraveling nuclear deal through its foreign minister zarif says they're willing to walk on french proposals to salvage the agreement which it signed with world powers in 2015 u.s. president donald trump withdrew from the pact last year and has been really imposing sanctions french president emanuel mccall says he'll either try to soften the effect of the sanctions or come up with a way to compensate the iranian people in return iran would keep complying with the

deal but before ford more diplomatic language iran's president has said talks with the u.s. would be useless on rouhani made the remarks at the unveiling of a new iranian built missile defense system i said beg the reports from the port city of bond that a bus. a day of national pride for iran the unveiling of its own long range surface to air missile defense system. 73 after years of sanctions that stopped iran from importing many weapons it's had to develop its own domestic arms industry and now facing a military buildup in the region president has done rouhani is defiant. now that our enemies do not accept logic we cannot respond with logic when the enemy launches a missile against us we cannot give a speech and say mr rocket please do not hit our country and innocent people we cannot say mr rocket launcher please hit

a button and self-destruct the missile in the year. before 373 can identify up to 100 targets at the same time iran's ballistic missile program was not part of the 2015 nuclear deal a reason cited by the united states for pulling out of the agreement last year and imposing sanctions on iran. the recent seizing of oil tankers an iranian vessel detained in the british overseas territory of gibraltar and the u.k. flag tanker detained by iran in the gulf has raised tensions further now the u.s. has put together a naval coalition it says is to protect the freedom of navigation through the gulf strategic strait of hormuz. we're 20 percent of the world's oil posses through a narrow stretch of water that iran and oman share territorial rights to. about oh yeah how man without iran they would not be any security in the region iran is a superpower ready to provide security for the region persian gulf and strait of

hormuz stop pressuring us and stop encouraging your friends to be hostile towards us we're ready for friendship and defense as we are ready to fight back any invasion you know the iranian tanker grace one i renamed. was released on the orders of the gibraltar's supreme court and is now heading to greece iran however is still holding the british tanker in the strait of hormuz the british empire was seized by the revolutionary guard last month for what they say were violations of international maritime regulations they say the vessel had changed directions in the shipping lanes it collided with a fishing boat but also tracking systems to avoid iranian forces now iran says the seizure and release of this vessel has nothing to do with the iranian vessel that was seized by british royal marines off the coast of gibraltar although a foreign ministry spokesman said a few days ago that he hoped that the issue would be in front of the court and that the ship would be released very soon. a straight britain and buttering have joined the u.s. coalition but on the seas here it's iran that still feels it holds this to teach it

could vantage in any potential conflict i said big al jazeera under a bus iran brazilian president. is asking for the world's help to put out a record numbers of wildfires in the amazon in a message on his facebook page he also double down on his accusations that environmental non-government organizations let the fires to make him look bad so far he's provided no evidence to back up his claims. now the amazon is bigger than europe how can you fight criminal fires in such an area it is clearly criminal how can you do it you need to catch them in the act otherwise there's nothing you can do you know. nongovernmental organizations are losing money money that came from germany and norway they are unemployed now so they are trying to overthrow me. burning is up 84 percent on the same time last year as a little has more fires engulfing large swaths of the amazon rain forest the

smoke is traveling far and wide it darkened the skies over sao paulo which is more than 2000 kilometers south of the burn area the scope of the fires is massive these satellite images from nasa show how the smoke has covered most of the northern half of brazil which is larger than the whole of europe. the amazon produces 20 percent of the world's oxygen and is home to more than 3000000 species of plants and animals fires in the amazon are a natural occurrence often started by lightning strikes but that doesn't explain the sudden increase in fires this year which environmentalist say has been exacerbated by cattle ranchers and sorie farmers clearing forest at an increased pace enforcement of amazon burning has been scaled back under president bush the nado a longtime skeptic of environmental concerns both scenarios slashed government funding

to environmental agencies and on tuesday suggested the fires were being staged by n.g.o.s to embarrass his government. under the impression that it could have been set by the n.g.o.s because they had asked for money what was their intention to bring about problems for brazil when fires burn in the amazon the area is so large there's nothing firefighters can do to put them out when these fires finally do go away environmentalists say that damage will have been done you know it is really. wasted and in a sense. ages to recruit forest and he can never. you know wave the amazon rain forest often called the lungs of planet earth now filled with smoke and fire and choking one of the world's most diverse ecosystems gabriel isn't though. french president emanuel mccall has again ruled out any major changes to

the braggs it deal michael has been hosting british prime minister but his johnson in paris stressing that there's no time left to work on a new agreement but as more from paris. if boris johnson had hoped to convince emmanuel macro to change the negotiating position on briggs it scrapped the irish backstop the french president's response made it clear that wasn't going to happen after greeting the british prime minister at the lease a palace macro said the e.u. would not renegotiate the withdrawal agreement and the backstop the insurance policy to prevent a hard border between ireland and northern ireland. no country in the european union can renegotiate this agreement the key elements of the 6 remans including the are not just technical constraints or legal issues but some genuine guarantees to preserve stability in ireland and the integrity of the single market which is the foundation of the european project this is all part of what was negotiated by the

u.k. and. michael did however back the german chancellor's proposal to johnson in a bowl in meeting on wednesday giving him 30 days to come up with alternatives to the backstop a good deal i was particularly encouraged by our conversations last night in berlin with our mutual friends and i know that we energy and with creativity and application we can find a way forward for our businesses and our citizens this analyst says that e.u. leaders might have an ulterior motive for offering 30 days more time. european leaders may hold that breweries jencks on the stock old in the coming days because they know johnson's majority is very for joining all saturday mackerel hosts johnson and other g 7 leaders including u.s. president donald trump for a summit in the south of france the meeting with johnson gives mccraw an opportunity to reaffirm his commitment to the european union coming just 2 days

before the g. 7 summit it also allows him to send a message to world leaders including donald trump that when it comes to bragg's it the easy united and won't you turn on a way back ross says that britain's destiny is in its own hands if it leaves europe on october 31st without a deal the french president says it's the u.k. government that will be responsible and not the e.u. natasha al-jazeera paris. u.n. investigators say the scale of sexual violence against that or he media demonstrates an intent to commit genocide a fact finding report says soldiers routinely and systematically employed rape gang rape and other violent and forced sexual acts against women girls boys men and transgender people in blatant violation of international human rights law the un says those responsible should be prosecuted on charges of war crimes genocide and crimes against humanity sexual violence and persecution appears to be ongoing in

several states and me and more such as the states of cashion and shan more than 7 100000 fled a military offense in france of 2017 and they're still in camps in bangladesh i think a couple of swami was on the u.n. fact finding mission and me and ma she says the use of sexual violence was systematic and widespread. the tatmadaw used sexual islands as a tool of their military tactics it is very much a part of their tactic it's what is called the full cuts. but in especially in the rowing areas what happened is it realistic extremely violent extremely brutal to the point that we said bad it showed a kind of intent to destroy in whole or in part of a population so i think both were shocking the fact that it was done on some scale

but they're also the fact that at the one committee may have been done with the intent to destroy in whole or part in our report last year we mentioned 6 generals whom we felt were particularly responsible for this kind of strategy whom we thought account but who should be held accountable and we have also pushed for international mechanism to deal with this issue we push for international sanctions i think it's really important we have actually seen satellite imagery of the areas these people were supposed to return to not a building as everything has been bulldozed not even the trees standing new structures have been built which i would not say really worthy of inhabitation in that sense so i think to some extent we really have to be concerned units yahoo has promised itself in the world that we will.