Can Artificial Intelligence ever truly replace human discretion? This question has for long been a topic of debate and now, an incident involving a parent, his child, and some photographs taken for medical reasons has once more brought the matter into focus.
Google uses an automated tool to flag abusive images of children. While the system clearly has its advantages, it may also go wrong and have severe consequences for the individuals involved.
In one such example, which the New York Times broke first, a stay-at-home father in San Francisco is under police investigation after taking images and recordings of an infection on his son’s genitalia.
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The man who has only been identified by his first name noticed that his toddler’s penis was causing him pain and looked swollen. Mark used his phone to click pictures for online consultation with the doctor.
While the infection soon went away thanks to antibiotics prescribed based on those pictures, Mark’s troubles did not.
Mark and his wife used the phone and their service provider Google to upload the images to their healthcare provider’s messaging system and soon after received a notification that his Google account has been blocked because of “harmful content” that was “a severe violation of Google’s policies and might be illegal.”
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While the particular reason was not provided, the list of possible reasons why this may have happened did have “child sexual abuse & exploitation.”
Puzzled, the couple recalled the pictures in question and contacted Google to clear up the issue. However, the big tech firm refused to reinstate his account and in a statement said, “Child sexual abuse material is abhorrent and we’re committed to preventing the spread of it on our platforms.”
The San Francisco Police Department investigation was headed by Nicholas Hillard, who upon investigating concluded: “that no crime occurred”.
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However, in spite of Mark submitting the police report to Google, the giant has decided to permanently delete his account. A move that is costing the stay-at-home dad a lot of data and almost all of his digital presence.
In a similar case in Texas, another father Cassio had a similar thing happen to me.
As per the report, these two cases are only a drop in the bucket. Technology behemoths identify millions of images of sexually abusing or exploiting youngsters each year. Google alone reported child abuse content in excess of 600,000 times in 2021, leading to the account suspension of over 270,000 users.
