In a CNN interview predicting a Nobel Peace Prize winner, Henrik Urdal from PRIO talks about his shortlist and HRDAG.

NPR Illinois has covered the new National Police Index, created by HRDAG’s Tarak Shah, Ayyub Ibrahim of Innocence Project, and Sam Stecklow of Invisible Institute.

“The model uses obvious predictor variables, Ball says, such as whether or not a drug lab has been busted in that county, or if the county borders the United States, or the ocean, but also includes less-obvious predictor variables such as the percentage of the county that is mountainous, the presence of highways, and the academic results of primary and secondary school students in the county.”

HRDAG analyst William Isaac is quoted in this article about so-called crime prediction. “They’re not predicting the future. What they’re actually predicting is where the next recorded police observations are going to occur.”

In this video, Trina Reynolds-Tyler of Invisible Institute talks about her work with HRDAG on the missing persons project in Chicago and Beneath the Surface.

Kristian Lum discusses the challenges of getting accurate data from conflict zones, as well as her concerns about predictive policing if law enforcement gets it wrong.

The Human Rights Data Analysis Group employs AI to analyze data from conflict zones, identifying patterns of human rights abuses that might be overlooked. This assists international organizations in holding perpetrators accountable.

“Every kind of classification system – human or machine – has several kinds of errors it might make,” [Patrick Ball] says. “To frame that in a machine learning context, what kind of error do we want the machine to make?” HRDAG’s work on predictive policing shows that “predictive policing” finds patterns in police records, not patterns in occurrence of crime.

In Responsible Data Reflection Story #7—from the Responsible Data Forum—work by HRDAG affiliates Anita Gohdes and Brian Root is cited extensively to make the point about how quantitative data are the result of numerous subjective human decisions. An excerpt: “The Human Rights Data Analysis Group are pioneering the way in collecting and analysing figures of killings in conflict in a responsible way, using multiple systems estimation.”

Kristian Lum’s work on the HRDAG Policing Project is referred to here: “In fact, Lum argues, it’s not clear how well this model worked at depicting the situation in Oakland. Those data on drug crimes were biased, she now reports. The problem was not deliberate, she says. Rather, data collectors just missed some criminals and crime sites. So data on them never made it into her model.”

HRDAG is mentioned in the “child welfare (sometimes called “family policing”)” section: At least 72,000 low-income children are exposed to AI-related decision-making through government child welfare agencies’ use of AI to determine if they are likely to be neglected. As a result, these children experience heightened risk of being separated from their parents and placed in foster care.

Tarak Shah is quoted with regard to the National Police Index: “Police often avoid accountability by moving to another agency rather than face discipline. This tool, allowing anyone to look up and track the histories of such officers, provides an invaluable service for the human rights community in our fight against impunity.”

HRDAG director of research Patrick Ball is quoted in this New York Times article about a paper that models death tolls in Gaza.

Patrick Ball, estadístico norteamericano, colabora con el Programa de Derechos Humanos de la Universidad Iberoamericana en una investigación sobre fosas clandestinas.

An excerpt: The “It breaks the human” report released by the human rights group Amnesty International highlights new statistics from the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, or HRDAG, an organization that uses scientific approaches to analyze human rights violations.

HRDAG director of research Patrick Ball is quoted in this Nature article about how body counts are a crude measure of the war’s impact and more reliable estimates will take time to compile.