Incident 238: Oregon’s Screening Tool for Child Abuse Cases Discontinued Following Concerns of Racial Bias

Description: Oregon’s Department of Human Services (DHS) stopped using its Safety at Screening Tool, that is aimed to predict the risk that children wind up in foster care or be investigated in the future, and opted for a new process allegedly to reduce disparities and improve racially equitable decision-making.

Tools

New ReportNew ReportNew ResponseNew ResponseDiscoverDiscoverView HistoryView History
Alleged: Oregon Department of Human Services developed and deployed an AI system, which harmed children of minority groups and families of minority groups.

Incident Stats

Incident ID
238
Report Count
1
Incident Date
2018-10-01
Editors
Khoa Lam

Incident Reports

Reports Timeline

Oregon dropping AI tool used in child abuse cases
lagrandeobserver.com · 2022

WASHINGTON — Child welfare officials in Oregon will stop using an algorithm to help decide which families are investigated by social workers, opting instead for a new process that officials say will make better, more racially equitable deci…

Variants

A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.