Furious 65-year-old wrongly jailed for a year ‘by AI program’ sues Chicago

AN exonerated man has filed a lawsuit against the city of Chicago for using ‘unreliable’ AI to falsely imprison him.

Michael Williams, 65, spent a year in jail after a controversial artificial intelligence (AI) program dubbed SpotShotter prompted his arrest, The Associated Press reports.

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What happened?

The Chicago man was investigated, arrested, and charged with killing a neighbor in 2020.

However, in 2021, a judge dismissed the murder case against him due to a lack of evidence – after he had already spent a year in jail.

Now, Williams along with a human rights advocacy group called The MacArthur Project have decided to take legal action.

What is Williams claiming?

A lawsuit was filed in federal court on Thursday, July 21, 2022, and alleges that Williams was arrested based on no real evidence.

The suit also claims that Chicago police misused SpotShotter, which utilizes gunshot-location technology, calling it “unreliable”.

Because officers put “blind faith” in SpotShotter, which utilizes gunshot-location technology, they also ruled out potential suspects.

How could this happen?

Chicago prosecutors reportedly used audio picked up by ShotSpotter as critical evidence in charging Williams with murder.

ShotSpotter, however, is notorious for providing flimsy and even controversial evidence.

One 2021 report by the MacArthur Project found that 89 percent of ShotSpotter alerts lacked any on-site evidence, Futurism reports.

That same year, a Vice investigation claimed that the technology is racially biased, citing the death of 13-year-old Adam Toledo.

In March 2021, Toledo, an unarmed Black teenager, was shot by Chicago police after receiving a ShotSpotter alert.

What’s next?

The suit is asking for class-action status for any Chicago resident who was stopped on the basis of the alerts.

It’s also seeking a court order to barr the technology and its use by law enforcement in the city.

“Even though now I’m so-called free, I don’t think I will ever be free of the thought of what they have done and the impact that has on me now, like the shaking with my hand,” Williams said.

“I constantly go back to the thought of being in that place. … I just can’t get my mind to settle down.”