Banjo (application)

Last updated

Banjo is a Utah-based surveillance software company that claimed to use AI [1] to identify events for public safety agencies. It was founded in 2010 by Damien Patton. [2] The company gained notoriety in 2020 when the State of Utah signed a $20 million contract for their "panopticon" software. In May, the company experienced backlash and suspending of contracts after Patton's membership in the Ku Klux Klan and participation in a drive-by terrorist attack on a synagogue was revealed.

Contents

In 2020, the company had approximately 200 employees in South Jordan, Utah, Park City, Utah, Washington D.C., and Menlo Park, California and had received approximately $126 million in funding. [3]

A 2021 audit requested by the State of Utah that tried to assess algorithmic bias in the AI declared that "Banjo does not use techniques that meet the industry definition of artificial Intelligence". [1] [4] [5]

History

Social media application

After building a "friend-finding" app called Peer Compass for a Las Vegas hackathon in 2010 and then a Google hackathon in 2011 (the app won both events), [3] [6] Damien Patton founded Banjo as a social media application for phones to aggregate and discover live events by scraping public, geotagged content from Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Path, Google Plus, VKontakte and EyeEm, then indexed by location, time and content. In 2016, Banjo was gathering information from more than 1.2 billion public social media accounts. [7] Shortly after the Google event, BlueRun Ventures invested $800,000 in the company. [6] Techcrunch called it "the creepy/awesome cyber-stalking app" and stated it had 500,000 downloads by December 2011, when the company launched a web version. [8] [9] The app had one million users by April 2012. [10]

After attending South by Southwest in 2011 and seeing other friend-finding apps like Glancee, Sonar, and Highlight, Patton told his investors in 2012 that he was pivoting to Banjo and fired all but one employee. Banjo's location-enabled social aggregation application launched in November 2012, [11] [6] though it was still described in December 2012 as an app to find friends who are nearby. [12]

News application

After Patton realized Banjo's potential application to the Boston Marathon bombing manhunt, Banjo went from social media to brand marketing and to service news companies, launching in January 2014 and calling it Banjo Enterprise. [13] [6] [14] He also said the company quickly uncovered the 2014 Shooting of Michael Brown, and was alerted about the 2015 East Village gas explosion 58 minutes before the Associated Press reported it. [13]

The company's revenue in 2014 was under $1 million. In March 2014 the company completed a $16 million Series B round of financing from Balderton Capital with BlueRun Ventures investing again and VegasTechFund as a new investor. In May 2015 the company received their Series C financing when SoftBank invested $100 million into the company. At the time it had 60 employees on staff, including their chief data scientist Pedro Alves, a Mensa member. The company was based in Las Vegas. Patton said the company was looking into applications in the financial markets and had no intention on doing business with federal law enforcement agencies, stating "I don't think those agencies could fucking deal with someone like me". [15] [16] [6] [17] [18] [19]

A profile of Patton in 2015 called him a "damn good driver" and gave an anecdote about their software uncovering a Florida State University shooting in 2014, explaining that is why NBC and ESPN were paying customers. [6] [3] Other customers included Anheuser Busch, the BBC, and Sinclair Broadcasting. [20] [3]

In 2016 Entrepreneur said the software was used by "thousands of news outlets, insurance firms, security contractors and more". [14]

Live Time Intelligence application

The company pivoted to their Live Time Intelligence application, used to highlight events on surveillance cameras for police and fire, in 2019. Social media is only used with any PII removed. Banjo suggests their service can be used for car crashes, school shootings, and fires. [21] [22]

Banjo courted the state of Utah with its services, moving the company from Vegas to Park City, Utah in 2018 and signed a $750,000 contract in November 2018 with the attorney general's office. Park City signed a contract for free access to their services as part of a pilot program in February 2019, and the city reported about half of the city's private business surveillance cameras were feeding the system. [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28]

In 2019 a lobbyist for the company told the Salt Lake Valley Emergency Communications Center that the company "essentially do what Palantir does, but they do it live." [29] [3] [30] [25]

In 2020 the state of Utah signed a $20.7 million five-year contract with Banjo, leading to increased scrutiny. Vice said they were "Turning Utah Into a Surveillance Panopticon". [3] [30] [31] [22] [32] Senator Mike Lee, who said he's known Patton for several years, complimented Live Time and their commitment to privacy. [22] [26] The Utah Attorney General's Office, Utah's Department of Public Safety, and University of Utah all signed contracts with the company, though the Utah Transit Authority demurred. [26] [33]

Utah's Libertas Institute has expressed concern about Live Time, as has American Civil Liberties Union's Utah branch and the Electronic Freedom Foundation. [22]

In March 2020, VICE's Motherboard uncovered a "shadow company" named Pink Unicorn Labs that developed apps for iPhone and Android with no outward connection to Banjo. The apps were designed to harvest social media data and "secretly farming peoples' user tokens", with app names like "One Direction Fan App", "EDM Fan App", and "Formula Racing App." It led to comparisons to Cambridge Analytica. [34]

The Salt Lake Tribune discovered that Utah's Intermountain Healthcare had a $60,000 contract with Banjo, signed in April 2020. Intermountain would provide patient counts (room occupancy) and receive access to the LiveTime app. [35]

Goshen, Indiana's Police Department signed a $20,000 contract with Banjo in early March 2020. [36]

In April 2020, Matt Stroud of OneZero uncovered CEO Patton's involvement with the Nashville, Tennessee-based Dixie Knights chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. In June 1992, when Patton was 17, he drove Grand Knight Leonard William Armstrong during a drive-by shooting with a TEC-9 on the West End Synagogue. Police arrested Patton and confiscated an AK-47. He was then released to the custody of Christian music producer Jonathan David Brown. Patton then fled the state with the assistance of Brown. [3]

Patton confirmed his membership in the KKK and involvement with the white power skinheads, which he called "the foot soldiers for groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Nations". OneZero republished a picture printed in The Tennessean of Patton at an Aryan Nations meeting where he and other members are giving the Nazi salute. [3] [37]

Patton served in the U.S. Navy and admitted to fraternizing with skinheads. [3] In a 2015 Inc. profile, he said he wanted to enlist after seeing the 1990 Gulf War on TV. He said he rose up the ranks on the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk , leaving after two tours, ending up in San Diego, California. He then became the chief mechanic on a NASCAR racecar sponsored by Lowe's after starting on a pit crew in 1993.

Contract suspensions

Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes suspended the $20 million contract in late April 2020 after the KKK ties came out and would review its use. [38]

The University of Utah suspended its use, stating it has "no tolerance for racism or bias. The university expects this of itself and its business partners." In May 2020 the university terminated its $500,000 contract and demanded all data be returned. [22] [38] [39]

NAACP's Salt Lake Branch president stated they were "appalled" and it was "extremely alarming as to the data that he has acquired". [22] [40] [24] The Indiana contract was also suspended. [41] [42]

On April 29, 2020, Banjo stated they would suspend all contracts in the state, though they did not mention Intermountain Healthcare. [43] [40] [44] [35]

Rep. Andrew Stoddard stated the investigation into the company was "long overdue", and Rep. Cory Maloy also expressed concern. [45] On May 4, Utah's Attorney General Office asked Utah State Auditor John Dougall to review their contracts with Banjo, to look for algorithmic bias, and to ensure privacy. [46] [47] [48]

The AI Now Institute linked Banjo with Clearview AI, as both have far-right ties. While Banjo doesn't have explicit far-right algorithmic goals like Clearview does, it still raises concerns about algorithmic bias, even if unintentional. Other historic Silicon Valley links to far-right ideology mentioned include Jeffrey Epstein, William Shockley, and James Damore. [49]

Resignation

On May 8, 2020, Patton resigned from the board and as CEO of Banjo, removing all decisionmaking authority. Justin R. Lindsey, who has been CTO for less than a year, has been named CEO. Lindsey had been CTO of the FBI immediately after 9/11. [50] [43] [51] [52]

Rebranding as safeXai

In February 2021, it was discovered that the company quietly renamed itself as safeXai. The name had been filed in September 2020; Patton remains a minority shareholder. [53] [54] [55]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Salesforce</span> American software company

Salesforce, Inc. is an American cloud-based software company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It provides customer relationship management (CRM) software and applications focused on sales, customer service, marketing automation, e-commerce, analytics, and application development.

Automattic Inc. is an American global distributed company which was founded in August 2005 and is most notable for WordPress.com, as well as its contributions to WordPress. The company's name is a play on founder Matt Mullenweg's first name and the word "automatic".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Box, Inc.</span> Cloud content management program

Box, Inc. is a public company based in Redwood City, California. It develops and markets cloud-based content management, collaboration, and file sharing tools for businesses. Box was founded in 2005 by Aaron Levie and Dylan Smith. Initially, it focused on consumers, but around 2009 and 2010 Box pivoted to focus on business users. The company raised about $500 million over numerous funding rounds before going public in 2015. Its software allows users to store and manage files in an online folder system accessible from any device. Users can then comment on the files, share them, apply workflows, and implement security and governance policies.

Deezer is a French music streaming service founded in 2007. The company has been a subsidiary of Access Industries since 2016. Deezer is available via web and on various digital platforms, including Android, iOS, macOS and others.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quizlet</span> American online studying platform

Quizlet is a multi-national American company that provides tools for studying and learning. Quizlet was founded in October 2005 by Andrew Sutherland, who at the time was a 15-year old student, and released to the public in January 2007. Quizlet's primary products include digital flash cards, matching games, practice electronic assessments, and live quizzes. In 2017, 1 in 2 high school students used Quizlet. As of December 2021, Quizlet has over 500 million user-generated flashcard sets and more than 60 million active users.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Smule</span> Mobile app developer

Smule is an American mobile app developer with headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah. The company specializes in developing social music-making and collaboration applications for iOS, Android, and Web.

Instructure Holdings, Inc. is an educational technology company based in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. It is the developer and publisher of Canvas, a web-based learning management system (LMS), and Mastery Connect, an assessment management system. Prior to its IPO in 2021, the company was owned by private-equity firm Thoma Bravo.

Vivint Smart Home, Inc. is a United States-based smart home company. A subsidiary of NRG Energy, it was founded by Keith Nellesen and Todd Pedersen in 1999. Its products provide a unified access point to manage all smart home features, with 2 million customers as of 2023.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Domo, Inc.</span> American computer software company

Domo, Inc. is an American cloud software company based in American Fork, Utah, United States. It specializes in business intelligence tools and data visualization.

Snapchat is an American multimedia instant messaging app and service developed by Snap Inc., originally Snapchat Inc. One of the principal features of Snapchat is that pictures and messages are usually only available for a short time before they become inaccessible to their recipients. The app has evolved from originally focusing on person-to-person photo sharing to presently featuring users' "Stories" of 24 hours of chronological content, along with "Discover", letting brands show ad-supported short-form content. It also allows users to store photos in a password-protected area called "My Eyes Only". It has also reportedly incorporated limited use of end-to-end encryption, with plans to broaden its use in the future.

Whisper is a proprietary mobile app available without charge. It is a form of anonymous social media, allowing users to post and share photo and video messages anonymously, although this claim has been challenged with privacy concerns over Whisper's handling of user data. The postings, called "whispers", consist of text superimposed over an image, and the background imagery is either automatically retrieved from Whisper's search engine or uploaded by the user. The app, launched in March 2012, is the main product of the media company WhisperText LLC, which was co-founded by CEO Michael Heyward, the son of the entertainment executive Andy Heyward, and Brad Brooks, who is the CEO of mobile messaging service TigerText. Since 2015, the service has sought to become more of a brand advertising platform, with promotional partnerships with Netflix, NBCUniversal, Disney, HBO, and MTV. According to TechCrunch, as of March 2017, Whisper has a total of 17 billion monthly pageviews on its mobile and desktop websites, social channels and publisher network, with 250 million monthly users across 187 countries. It is owned by MediaLab. In October 2022, Whisper was removed from the Apple App Store, and was added to the App Store again but was removed in 2023 again temporarily, but was recently restored to iOS in March of 2024

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Whitney Wolfe Herd</span> Founder and former CEO of Bumble (born 1989)

Whitney Wolfe Herd is an American entrepreneur. She is the founder, executive chair, and former CEO of publicly traded Bumble, an online dating platform, launched in 2014. She is a co-founder of Tinder and was previously its Vice President of Marketing.

Picsart is an Armenian-American technology company based in Miami, Florida, United States and Yerevan, Armenia that develops the Picsart suite of online photo and video editing applications, with a social creative community. The platform allows users to take and edit pictures and videos, draw with layers, and share the images on Picsart and other social networks. It is one of the world's most popular apps, with reportedly more than 1 billion downloads across 180 countries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Utah Royals</span> American womens professional soccer team

The Utah Royals are an American women's professional soccer club based in Salt Lake City. Established on November 16, 2017, as an expansion club, the Royals played its first stint in the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) from 2018 until ceasing operations in 2020, with their player-related assets transferred to the expansion Kansas City Current. In 2023, Real Salt Lake owners Ryan Smith and David Blitzer reestablished the team.

West End Synagogue, originally Khal Kodesh Adath Israel and known for a while as the Gay Street Synagogue, is a congregation in Nashville, Tennessee. It is affiliated with the Conservative movement and dates to the 1850s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arjun Sethi (entrepreneur)</span> American entrepreneur, investor and executive

Arjun Sethi is an American internet entrepreneur, investor and executive. He is co-founder and partner at venture capital firm Tribe Capital. He previously was partner at Social Capital and served as an executive at Yahoo! where he launched Yahoo! Livetext. Before that, he was co-founder and CEO of MessageMe and he was CEO of Lolapps, the developer behind Ravenwood Fair. In December 2023, he became Tribe Capital's chairman and CIO.

Clearview AI, Inc. is an American facial recognition company, providing software to primarily law enforcement and other government agencies. The company's algorithm matches faces to a database of more than 20 billion images collected from the Internet, including social media applications. Founded by Hoan Ton-That and Richard Schwartz, the company maintained a low profile until late 2019, until its usage by law enforcement was first reported.

The COVID-19 pandemic began in the U.S. state of Utah in early March 2020 with travel-related cases. Residents stockpiled goods, large conferences were made remote-only, postponed, or cancelled; a state of emergency was declared, and some public universities and other colleges switched to online-only classes. After the first case of community spread was found on March 14, Utah faced a shortage of testing kits, and public schools were ordered to be closed. Community spread was confirmed in more counties, and the state issued a public health order prohibiting dine-in service in restaurants and gatherings of more than 10 people except in grocery stores. A 5.7-magnitude earthquake struck the Wasatch Front on March 18, 2020, hampering the pandemic response.

Damien Patton is an American entrepreneur known for founding the AI company Banjo. He began his career in the U.S. Navy in 1991 and later transitioned to NASCAR, where he worked as a chief mechanic while earning a business degree from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Leonard William Armstrong was a Grand Dragon of the White Knights, Tennessee's Ku Klux Klan. On the night of June 10, 1990 with Damien Patton driving, Armstrong shot at the West End Synagogue, which was empty, with a TEC-9. The two were later assisted by Christian music producer and KKK member Jonathan David Brown. He was indicted for civil rights violations in December 1991 and pleaded guilty, taking a plea bargain, in April 1992. He served 42 months in prison. Talking with OneZero in 2020, Armstrong was remorseful, stating he "was the guy who was at the root of this whole thing". He also said he has joined Life After Hate.

References

  1. 1 2 "Government audit of AI with ties to white supremacy finds no AI". VentureBeat. April 5, 2021. Retrieved April 7, 2021.
  2. ↑ Holmes, Aaron (May 11, 2020). "CEO of SoftBank-backed startup Banjo resigns after hidden neo-Nazi past surfaces". Business Insider. New York, New York. Archived from the original on August 31, 2020. Retrieved May 12, 2020.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Stroud, Matt. "CEO of Surveillance Firm Banjo Once Helped KKK Leader Shoot Up a Synagogue". Medium. Retrieved May 2, 2020.
  4. ↑ Richardson, Holly (March 30, 2021). "State Auditor announces the release of a review of Banjo, Inc. and its public safety application". utahpolicy.com. Retrieved April 7, 2021.
  5. ↑ Iglesias, David R. (September 14, 2023). "Life In the Surveillance State". realclearpolicy.com. Retrieved September 15, 2023. In 2020, Utah came dangerously close to implementing a public-private partnership between the attorney general's office and the private tech firm, Banjo.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Bourne, Will (April 2015). "The Most Important Social Media Company You've Never Heard Of". Inc.com. Retrieved May 1, 2020.
  7. ↑ "How (and Where) Artificial Intelligence Is Making Its Mark in Media". HPE Newsroom. Retrieved November 6, 2018.
  8. ↑ "Half A Million Downloads Later, Social Discovery App Banjo Hits The Web – TechCrunch". TechCrunch. December 27, 2011. Retrieved May 2, 2020.
  9. ↑ "Creepy/Awesome Banjo App Now Pings You When Your Friends Are Nearby – TechCrunch". TechCrunch. October 27, 2011. Retrieved May 2, 2020.
  10. ↑ "Social discovery service Banjo hits 1 million users in just 9 months". VentureBeat. April 18, 2012. Retrieved May 2, 2020.
  11. ↑ "Is Discovering People Nearby Still The Future? Banjo: No. Sonar: Partly. Highlight: Hell Yes". Fast Company. Retrieved May 1, 2020.
  12. ↑ "When Going Solo Is Not the Goal". The New York Times . Retrieved May 1, 2020. Banjo, an app for iPhone, uses location technology to facilitate spontaneous meetups while you're on the go. Its creator, Damien Patton, came up with the idea after learning that while in an airport he missed connecting with a friend he hadn't seen in years. Both of them had posted their locations on social networks — but not the same ones. Banjo is designed to ensure that sort of thing doesn't happen; it combines all your social networks into a single stream of real-time updates.
  13. 1 2 "Why social media startup Banjo will strike a chord with marketers". Fortune. Retrieved May 1, 2020.
  14. 1 2 Friedman, Lindsay (July 12, 2016). "The Boston Bombings Inspired This Entrepreneur to Use His Application to Make a Difference in the World". Entrepreneur. Retrieved May 1, 2020.
  15. ↑ Banjo. "Banjo Raises $16 Million In Series B Funding". Banjo. Archived from the original on September 11, 2014. Retrieved March 27, 2014.
  16. ↑ Etherington, Darrell (March 13, 2014). "Banjo Raises $16M To Grow Its Experiential Real-Time News And Events Platform". TechCrunch. Retrieved March 27, 2014.
  17. ↑ MacMillan, Douglas. "Banjo Raises $100 Million to Detect World Events in Real Time". WSJ. Retrieved May 1, 2020.
  18. ↑ "Banjo raises $100 million, but the pressure comes from within". Fortune. Retrieved May 1, 2020.
  19. ↑ Bradshaw, Tim (May 7, 2015). "Banjo latest California start-up to attract big funding round". ft.com. Retrieved May 2, 2020.
  20. ↑ "Banjo Puts News And Live Events Front And Center With Version 4.0 Of Its Mobile App – TechCrunch". TechCrunch. January 16, 2014. Retrieved May 2, 2020.
  21. ↑ "Banjo" . Retrieved May 1, 2020. Is Banjo a social media company? NO. We operate a single service, Live Time, to deliver information to first responders. Today, publicly available social media is only used to verify an event after all personal identifiable information (PII) is removed. We were founded as a social media company dedicated to connecting users with their friends. Then, we became a news company. Today, we are neither and all apps/products from those two ventures have been discontinued and all associated data deleted.
  22. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Utah A.G. halts $21 million Banjo contract as founder's past ties with KKK unveiled". Deseret News. April 28, 2020. Retrieved May 2, 2020.
  23. ↑ "Banjo suspends surveillance, data collection in Utah after reports of founder's past involvement in the KKK". The Salt Lake Tribune. Retrieved May 2, 2020.
  24. 1 2 "Utah attorney general suspends state contract with Banjo in light of founder's KKK past". The Salt Lake Tribune. Retrieved May 2, 2020.
  25. 1 2 "In Their Words: Damien Patton | Utah Governor's Office of Economic Development". Utah Governor's Office of Economic Development. March 2019. Retrieved May 2, 2020.
  26. 1 2 3 "Utah company Banjo is building a massive surveillance system with the help of the state's attorney general". The Salt Lake Tribune. Retrieved May 2, 2020.
  27. ↑ Brown, Bubba (April 30, 2020). "UPDATED: Banjo CEO Damien Patton under scrutiny after report details past involvement with KKK". Park Record | UPDATED: Banjo CEO Damien Patton under scrutiny after report details past involvement with KKK. Retrieved May 2, 2020.
  28. ↑ "CEO of surveillance firm hired by Utah is former KKK". The Daily Dot. April 28, 2020. Retrieved May 2, 2020.
  29. ↑ "OPERATIONS BOARD MEETING" (PDF). vecc9-1-1.com. August 8, 2019. Retrieved May 1, 2020.
  30. 1 2 Koebler, Jason; Maiberg, Emanuel; Cox, Joseph (March 4, 2020). "This Small Company Is Turning Utah Into a Surveillance Panopticon". Vice. Retrieved May 2, 2020.
  31. ↑ "State of Utah contract with Banjo" (PDF). utah-das-contract-searchsp.s3.amazonaws.com. Retrieved May 2, 2020.
  32. ↑ "Lawmakers criticize Utah's planned next-generation surveillance program as 'North Korea-esque' and 'Big Brother'". The Salt Lake Tribune. Retrieved May 2, 2020.
  33. ↑ "Banjo AI surveillance is already monitoring traffic cams across Utah". Engadget. March 4, 2020. Retrieved May 2, 2020.
  34. ↑ "Surveillance Firm Banjo Used a Secret Company and Fake Apps to Scrape Social Media - VICE". vice. March 9, 2020. Retrieved May 2, 2020.
  35. 1 2 Larsen, Leia. "Banjo had a contract to collect coronavirus data from Intermountain Healthcare". The Salt Lake Tribune. Retrieved May 5, 2020.
  36. ↑ "Goshen, Ind., Police Get OK to Use Intel-Sharing Platform". govtech.com. March 10, 2020. Retrieved May 2, 2020.
  37. ↑ Williams, Phil (August 23, 1992). "Will still use farm for white causes- owner". The Tennessean .
  38. 1 2 "Utah Attorney General's Office Statement On Reports On Banjo Founder". Utah Attorney General. April 28, 2020. Retrieved May 2, 2020.
  39. ↑ "University of Utah terminates its contract with Banjo". The Salt Lake Tribune. Retrieved May 8, 2020.
  40. 1 2 "Banjo suspends state surveillance contracts after report details founder's white supremacist past – TechCrunch". TechCrunch. April 30, 2020. Retrieved May 2, 2020.
  41. ↑ Gershgorn, Dave. "Banjo Suspends All Operations in Utah Following OneZero Investigation". Medium. Retrieved May 2, 2020.
  42. ↑ "Utah pauses Banjo's AI surveillance after learning of owner's racist past". Engadget. April 28, 2020. Retrieved May 2, 2020.
  43. 1 2 "Banjo Blog". Banjo. Archived from the original on May 11, 2020. Retrieved May 11, 2020. (5/8/20) Banjo, Inc announced today that the company's current CEO and founder, Damien Patton has resigned and that the company will be transitioning to a new, reconstituted leadership team effectively immediately. Banjo's new CEO will be Justin R. Lindsey, the current CTO of the company. "I'm deeply honored to have worked alongside the Banjo team and am proud of all we have accomplished thus far," Patton said. "I am confident Banjo's greatest days are still ahead, and will do everything in my power to ensure our mission succeeds. However, under the current circumstances, I believe Banjo's best path forward is under different leadership." "Nine months ago I was inspired by Banjo's mission to join the company full time as the CTO," Lindsey said. "As CEO, I'm looking forward to continuing Banjo's dedication to technology solutions that protect privacy." (4/29/20) Following yesterday's announcement by the Utah Attorney General's Office, Banjo has decided to suspend all Utah contracts by not ingesting any government data or providing any services to government entities until an independent third party audit has been contracted and completed. Banjo believes that any company working with the government should be subject to audits and oversight.
  44. ↑ "Banjo pauses Utah contracts as AG Reyes launches audit for racial/religious bias following revelations of founder's white supremacist background". Deseret News. April 30, 2020. Retrieved May 2, 2020.
  45. ↑ "The IUP Panel on Banjo, virtual conventions and reopening businesses". ABC 4. Retrieved May 4, 2020.
  46. ↑ "Government contracts with Banjo could be on pause for months as state conducts audit". The Salt Lake Tribune. Retrieved May 5, 2020.
  47. ↑ "Utah State Auditor to look into Banjo's data privacy and other issues". KSTU. May 4, 2020. Retrieved May 5, 2020.
  48. ↑ "State auditor will tackle scan for 'algorithmic bias' following revelations of Banjo CEO's past ties with Ku Klux Klan". Deseret News. May 5, 2020. Retrieved May 5, 2020.
  49. ↑ Sarah Myers West (May 4, 2020). "AI and the Far Right: A History We Can't Ignore". AI Now Institute. Retrieved May 5, 2020.
  50. ↑ "Banjo CEO resigns to preserve the company's AI surveillance deals". Engadget. May 10, 2020. Retrieved May 11, 2020.
  51. ↑ "Banjo CEO steps down as fallout from revelations of past ties to KKK continues". Deseret News. May 8, 2020. Retrieved May 11, 2020. When asked about what structural changes might be in store to ensure Patton's functional disconnection from the company, a Banjo spokesman described the former CEO's status as one in which he "is not an employee, no longer on the board and has no operating capacity on the company."
  52. ↑ "Banjo CEO steps down after news of past KKK membership". The Salt Lake Tribune. Retrieved May 11, 2020.
  53. ↑ Riley, Tonya (February 12, 2021). "The Cybersecurity 202: Biden will sign an executive order to fuel the U.S. semiconductor industry". Washington Post. Retrieved February 16, 2021. Banjo rebranded as safeXai after its then-CEO, Damien Patton, was identified as having links to the Ku Klux Klan and the company's future appeared to be in peril
  54. ↑ Stroud, Matt (February 12, 2021). "Banjo Quietly Rebranded Itself Following Report on Former CEO's KKK Past". Medium. Retrieved February 16, 2021. But new evidence suggests that in the months following OneZero's report, Banjo quietly rebranded as safeXai. Patton is still a minority shareholder in the company and an inventor of each of its patents.
  55. ↑ "In the wake of Banjo controversy, state auditor calls on governments to limit partnerships with software vendors who collect private and sensitive data". The Salt Lake Tribune. February 2, 2021. Retrieved February 16, 2021. Justin Lindsey, who stepped in to take Patton's place as CEO, is now listed at the CEO of safeXai, a Utah-based software company that 'uses advanced signal processing and artificial intelligence to make the world a safer place, according to LinkedIn.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.