Webinar: Public health surveillance, AI bias, and risks to privacy in the fight against COVID-19

To help fight COVID-19, U.S. tech companies have recently announced efforts to leverage public health surveillance, including tracking the spread of the coronavirus using Bluetooth-enabled devices. China, South Korea, and Israel are already engaged in some form of citizen tracking to mitigate and reduce their infection rates. Artificial intelligence (AI) and other digital tools have the capability to capture biometrics, location data, and other indicators of infection. Given these existing and potential uses of AI, what are the privacy implications for the collection of such health data? Which groups are at risk of unintended and potentially discriminatory outcomes? How transparent will these systems be?

On April 21, the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings hosted a webinar discussion on the existing and potential use of digital public health surveillance tools, particularly AI.

Viewers can submit questions for panelists by emailing events@brookings.edu or via Twitter at @BrookingsGov or #AIBias.