Feds’ ‘extreme vetting’ plan rebuked by experts
WASHINGTON — Leading researchers castigated a federal plan that would use artificial intelligence methods to scrutinize immigrants and visa applicants, saying it is unworkable as written and likely to be “inaccurate and biased” if deployed.
The experts, a group of more than 50 computer and data scientists, mathematicians and other specialists in automated decision-making, urged the Department of Homeland Security to abandon the project, dubbed the “Extreme Vetting Initiative.”
That plan has its roots in President Trump’s repeated pledge during the 2016 campaign to subject immigrants seeking admission to the United States to more intense ideological scrutiny — or, as he put it, “extreme vetting.”
Over the summer, DHS published a “statement of objectives” for a system that would use computer algorithms to scan social media and other material in order to automatically flag undesirable entrants — and to continuously scan the activities of those allowed into the U.S.
The goal, that document stated, was to let computers help determine whether an immigrant “intends to commit criminal or terrorist acts,” as well as their likelihood of becoming a “positively contributing member of society.”
In a joint letter to DHS on Thursday, the dissenting researchers called that approach “neither appropriate nor feasible.”
The technology experts, who hail from both academia and big tech firms such as Google and Microsoft, warned that current AI methods aren’t capable of evaluating the traits that the government seeks to measure.
“Neither the federal government nor anyone else has defined, much less attempted to quantify, these characteristics,” the technologists wrote. “Algorithms designed to predict these undefined qualities could be used to arbitrarily flag groups of immigrants under a veneer of objectivity.”
Among the problems is that unlike algorithms that mine the traditional criminal justice system, where there’s no shortage of cases, the pool of data that could help predict terrorist leanings is tiny.
“In the national security context, it’s much harder to investigate the problem because you have a couple of cases a year,” said UC Berkeley postdoctoral researcher Joshua Kroll, who signed the letter.
One contracting-firm employee who attended an informational ICE meeting in July said the proposed system would simply expand data-management work that private vendors already undertake to help the government vet visa applicants. It wouldn’t give contractors any legal authority to approve or deny immigration benefits, said Bill Carney, who manages federal programs for consulting firm McManis & Monsalve Associates.