By Steven L. Johnson
Publication Date: 2026-05-11 12:41:00
In Baltimore on October 20, 2025, a 17-year-old student named Taki Allen was sitting outside his high school after soccer practice when a surveillance camera equipped with artificial intelligence misidentified the Doritos bag in his pocket as a weapon. Moments later, police cars arrived, officers drew their weapons and Allen was forced to his knees and handcuffed while they searched him. All they found was a crumpled bag of chips. The AI’s misidentification and subsequent human decisions turned a normal evening into a traumatic confrontation.
On December 24, 2025, Angela Lipps, a grandmother from Tennessee, was released after five months in prison because facial recognition software falsely linked her to fraud crimes in North Dakota, a state she had never visited. Police had held her at gunpoint as she was babysitting her four grandchildren.
These are unfortunate examples of how AI can lead to mistreatment of people, even due to technical deficiencies…
