2023-10-31 21:45:00
To protect its users and their accommodation, Airbnb has developed intelligent software capable of detecting the warning signs of a rental… not very commendable. A novelty which is part of the active fight against “potential troublemakers”, their hobby horse since 2020.
Birthdays, New Years, X projects… During the health crisis (but not only), rental housing turned upside down was legion and complaints from owners were quick to follow. The tourist rental giant therefore reacted, promising to “do everything [son] possible” to prevent these abuses.
Firstly, these are punishments in the aftermath which helped to calm things down, in particular by prohibiting new rentals from offenders, or by limiting rentals from young users with too many bad reviews.
Now, it is a preventive measure that is emerging. As reported by the BBC in a article on October 25, Airbnb developed “AI-based” software to detect questionable profiles. The latter analyzes a whole bunch of information, and flags those that could be a bad sign: relatively recent account creation date; reservation desired in the same city as their city of residence; length of stay limited to one night; coincidence with holiday periods like Halloween or New Year…
“If someone books a room for New Year’s Eve for just one night and they’re from the same city as the host, it’s probably going to be a party,” says Naba Banerjee, head of security and trust at Airbnb.
The problem, as Edward McFowland III, assistant professor of technology and operations management at Harvard Business School, pointed out, is that the machine can also catch someone well-intentioned who doesn’t check all the right boxes.
After all, a recent study showed that the functioning of an AI is comparable to that of a pigeon. As reported by the media Usbek&Ricathe authors of this study say that “pigeons do not need a logical rule [comme les êtres humains]but learn from previous trials and their errors”, in accordance with the principle of algorithms. This would allow them “to remember faces, see the world in bright colors or navigate complex routes”, but also, logically, to stupidly repeating what they are taught.
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