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Brandon Anderson (entrepreneur)

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Brandon D. Anderson is an American sociologist and entrepreneur. He founded Raheem.ai, a chatbot which helps the public monitor police interactions. He was the 2018 Echoing Green Black Male Achievement Fellow and is a 2019 TED fellow. In August 2024, several of Anderson's claims about his chatbot and personal history were questioned in an investigative article in The New York Times.

Early life

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Anderson was born in Oklahoma.[1] His mother is a rental car clerk and his father a forklift truck driver.[2][3] He has described his childhood as being "characterised by violence".[4] He was kicked out of his grandparents house as a teenager and made homeless.[5] Anderson ran away with his best friend, with whom he later fell in love.[5] Anderson enlisted in the Army in 2003, where he worked as a satellite engineer.[1][6] In 2007, while Anderson was serving as an engineer in the army overseas, he alleged that his partner was shot and killed by a police officer during a routine traffic stop.[5][7] An August 2024 article in The New York Times by David Fahrenthold suggested Anderson fabricated this origin story.[8] Anderson was discharged from the Army once he disclosed his sexuality.[9]

Education and career

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Anderson became a community activist and organiser, earning a degree at Georgetown University in 2015.[5] At Georgetown he studied sociology and philosophy.[6] He served as a Racial Equity Fellow at the Washington, D.C. Center for the Study of Social Policy.[4] Anderson learned that the majority of people don't report negative interactions with police officers because they "do not trust the system".[10]

In 2014 Anderson was awarded money from Fast ForWord and the My Brother's Keeper Challenge to build Raheem.ai, a Facebook messenger chatbot that eliminates barriers to reporting police misconduct.[1][11][12] The chatbot allowed the public to evaluate police interactions and offers follow-on support for users.[13][14] Raheem.ai was inspired by Waze, who, alongside offering navigation information, used user-generated information to inform local government about fill potholes.[12] The chatbot asked questions about recent interactions with the police, anonymized the data that was collected, and shared them in real-time to a public dashboard on police performance.[15][16][17] Raheem.ai published reports about where police are working well and where they are failing communities.[1][18] It aimed to reach all fifty states by 2020.[19] With Raheem.ai, Anderson looked to build the first crowdsourced database of police interactions.[20][21][22]

In 2016 Anderson delivered a TED talk at Georgetown, where he discussed what it means to be vulnerable.[23] He was named as one of the National Black Justice Coalition 100 Black LGBTQ/SGL Emerging Leaders.[24] Anderson was made an Echoing Green Fellow in 2018.[25][26]

However, Raheem.ai was never able to overcome a fundamental problem: that the US' thousands of separate police agencies have their own individual ways of preferred contact. David Fahrenthold of The New York Times wrote in August 2024:[8]

Mr. Anderson's complaint system — "Yelp for police," he called it — did not work. His website collected more than 2,700 stories from users about their interactions with police — accounts of unjustified traffic stops, physical assaults and harassment. But the work had little impact because Raheem was unable to solve a mind-bending technical problem.

There are 18,000 police departments in America. Some accept complaints online, but many require people to make a phone call or go to a police station. Raheem failed because it never offered a one-stop way for users to file their complaints directly with police.

[...] For now, his nonprofit appears legally active, but functionally dead. Several donors pulled their funding. Three employees were left out of work.[8]

Scrutiny

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In August 2024, The New York Times scrutinized Anderson's financial practices while heading Raheem.ai. They included large sums for hotels and clothing that were billed to the non-profit.[8]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d Kolodny, Lora (2017-09-13). "Raheem.ai: Yelp or Amazon Reviews for police interactions". www.cnbc.com. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
  2. ^ "Brandon D. Anderson". Conference on World Affairs. 2017-12-01. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
  3. ^ "My Origin Story: Brandon Anderson". Generation Titans. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
  4. ^ a b "Raheem". SIPS Fund. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
  5. ^ a b c d "Raheem is a Chatbot for Anonymously Rating Experiences with Police". Fast Forward. 2017-10-23. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
  6. ^ a b "Brandon Anderson". Halcyon. 2017-06-28. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
  7. ^ Whats Your Revolution 10 24 18 Brandon Anderson Founder of Raheem AI, retrieved 2019-02-27
  8. ^ a b c d Fahrenthold, David A. (2024-08-25). "Would a Group Opposed to Police Blow the Whistle on Its Founder?". The New York Times. Retrieved 2024-08-27.
  9. ^ Gray, Christopher. "Brandon Anderson's RAHEEM Has Leveraged Technology And Data To Help Thousands Of Black People Report Police Misconduct". Forbes. Retrieved 2020-10-28.
  10. ^ Mathew, Teresa (18 June 2018). "Positive or Negative: Rate Your Latest Police Encounter". Bloomberg.com. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
  11. ^ Schwartz, Elena (2018-06-13). "Can Artificial Intelligence Hold Police Accountable?". The Crime Report. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
  12. ^ a b "FEATURE: Young Black Entrepreneur Brandon Anderson creates app to monitor police brutality". AFROPUNK. 2016-04-18. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
  13. ^ "Brandon Anderson". Wonder Women Tech. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
  14. ^ Farley, Shannon (2017-06-22). "Nonprofits, not Silicon Valley startups, are creating AI apps for the greater good". Recode. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
  15. ^ "Raheem Ai - Tech Nonprofit". Fast Forward. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
  16. ^ Fast Forward (2018-03-29), Brandon Anderson, Founder of Raheem | AGG 2018, retrieved 2019-02-27
  17. ^ Peters, Adele (2017-10-02). "This Chatbot Makes It Easy To Document Your Interactions With The Police". Fast Company. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
  18. ^ "Meet the chatbots helping users anonymously report social injustices". VentureBeat. 2018-03-18. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
  19. ^ "Brandon Anderson". Camelback Ventures. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
  20. ^ "The AI Agenda". The Economist Events. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
  21. ^ contributor, Julia Airey / (2016-11-04). "Can this new chatbot increase police accountability?". Technical.ly DC. Retrieved 2019-02-27. {{cite web}}: |last= has generic name (help)
  22. ^ "Gay Man's Software Holds Police Accountable". www.intomore.com. 15 September 2017. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
  23. ^ TEDx Talks (2016-03-14), Make Space | Brandon Anderson | TEDxGeorgetown, retrieved 2019-02-27
  24. ^ "100 to Watch | National Black Justice Coalition". www.nbjc.org. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
  25. ^ "Brandon Anderson". www.echoinggreen.org. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
  26. ^ Echoing Green (2018-06-18), To Live and to Love in a World Free of Police Violence, retrieved 2019-02-27
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