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

submitted 3 months ago by ForgottenFlux to c/technology

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] 116 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The land lords who used the service should also be held liable. You mean to tell me you get a report with a binary answer and you just trust it with no due diligence? If there is no penalty for blindly trusting an algorithm they will just move to the next tool they can use to be bigots.

[–] [email protected] 50 points 3 months ago

Boy wait until you hear about credit scores...