Description: An AI program named REACH VET, designed and used by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to prevent veteran suicides, was reportedly found to prioritize white men while neglecting female veterans and survivors of military sexual trauma. This oversight persists despite rising suicide rates among these groups. The incident is an example of algorithmic bias and the exclusion of critical risk factors for female veterans.
Entities
View all entitiesAlleged: Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) developed and deployed an AI system, which harmed Veterans , Survivors of military sexual trauma and Female veterans.
Incident Stats
Incident ID
699
Report Count
2
Incident Date
2024-05-23
Editors
Daniel Atherton
Incident Reports
Reports Timeline
military.com · 2024
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An artificial intelligence (AI) program designed to prevent suicide among U.S. military veterans prioritizes white men and ignores survivors of sexual violence, which affects a far greater percentage of women, an investigation by The Fuller…
fullerproject.org · 2024
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- View the report at the Internet Archive
Warning: This newsletter contains references to suicide throughout.
Why did the suicide rate for female veterans spike 24% in the most recent U.S. government report? That’s the question we wanted to answer.
Experts pointed to a wide range …
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.