Giant Oak Search Technology (GOST), an AI-powered tool, is being used by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency to search social media posts for content that is considered disparaging to the country. The news, which 404 Media broke first, has sparked debate regarding privacy rights and the morality of this kind of monitoring.
Per the article citing private papers, GOST assists the agency in assessing social media posts to determine their potential risk to the United States. A person’s social media scores are ranked by the system on a scale of one to 100 according to how relevant they are to their projected mission. The use of techniques like GOST could make it more difficult to distinguish between fundamental individual rights and homeland security, even if social media evaluations have historically been used to look into potentially hazardous people.
The ACLU’s National Security Project deputy director, Patrick Toomey, raised concerns about the government’s use of algorithms to examine posts on social media. According to him, agencies shouldn’t be buying this kind of equipment covertly and without any accountability, and the government shouldn’t be utilizing algorithms to look through social media posts and determine which people are dangerous. The public is still quite wary of AI, especially when it comes to privacy. According to a Pew Research Centre research, 32% of Americans think AI will hurt rather than help employers and job candidates when it comes to hiring and evaluating personnel. Most Americans believe that AI poses a threat to humans, according to a Reuters poll.
