BiasHigh
Australian Terrorism Prediction Tool Reportedly Disparately Impacts Persons with Autism
- Occurred
- May 12, 2023
- Published
- May 12, 2023
- Source
- AI Incident Database
Summary
An independent report found that the Vera-2R tool, designed to predict the risk of future terrorist activities, considered autism as a risk factor despite lacking empirical evidence to support this claim. The report called into question the tool's overall validity and reliability, stating it was "extremely poor" at accurately predicting risk. The inclusion of autism as a risk factor had potentially serious implications for the tool's use and credibility.
Developers
- Unspecified
Deployers
- New South Wales Government
- Australian Federal Government
Harmed parties
- people with autism
- lawyers and other experts who were not informed of the tool's limitations
- Individuals assessed as high-risk based on the flawed criteria
- General public
- General public of Australia
Classification
Category confidence: 95%
Severity confidence: 90%
Rationale: Tool uses autism as risk factor without evidence, causing discriminatory impact on disabled individuals.
Classifier: Qwen/Qwen3.5-35B-A3B-FP8