>While this can be the fastest route, the GPS’s algorithm does not concern itself with factors important to truckers carrying a heavy load, such as the 43’s 1,300-foot elevation drop over four miles with two sharp turns. I know this is somewhat off topic but the lack of advanced options for GPS routing is such a PITA. It would be trivial to add check-boxes for things like: "I'm towing a trailer, don't make me take du…
Have you tried installing an actual GPS navigation app (as opposed to just Google Maps)? At least the last time I used one (I think it was CoPilot a few years back) you could specify stuff like "avoid toll roads", "prefer simplest route", and set the size of your vehicle all in the settings menu.
based on some studies I've seen, human judges are terrible due to basic human nature, so I'd like to see something happen to make things more objective. Of course, the algo would have to be open, as opposed to the proprietary software being used now. For example just having your sentencing be before lunch or at the end of the day results in harsher punishment simply due to the judge being hungry or tired. Same goes f…
Humans are biased too. It might be better to move the bias where it can more easily be studied and changed.
(There's an analogy to vehicle automation, where we accept a level of error in humans that we wouldn't in automation.)
> These algorithmic outputs inform decisions about bail, sentencing, and parole. Each tool aspires to improve on the accuracy of human decision-making that allows for a better allocation of finite resources. It's really not clear to me that much is gained from having very precise decisions made about bail and sentencing. Trying to predict the future is a fool's errand, whether a judge does it or a computer. It'd be b…
One problem I have seen is that when science is used, people in charge reject the science. One common example is the risk of sex offenders re-offending. It is well known that sex offenders are at a vastly increased risk of offending again. That is also quite false. What data there is on those who re-offend show that sex offenders have some of the lowest rates of recidivism, but people are so conditioned by the incorrect narrative that they reject the science. This includes not just the average person voting for a politician who will make worse laws, but also the people involved in the legal system who decides who gets parole, who gets probation, and how long should sentences last.
> These algorithmic outputs inform decisions about bail, sentencing, and parole. Each tool aspires to improve on the accuracy of human decision-making that allows for a better allocation of finite resources. It's really not clear to me that much is gained from having very precise decisions made about bail and sentencing. Trying to predict the future is a fool's errand, whether a judge does it or a computer. It'd be b…
I don't disagree it could be much better and based on something other than arbitrary nonsense, but these guides are designed to bring consistency to sentences within the same jurisdiction which would make them fairer than completely arbitrary judge sentences. At least everyone is subject to the same arbitrary nonsense guidelines instead of the mood and familiarity of the judge.
I'm reminded of that quote about a "foolish consistency being the hobgoblin of little minds", but when you consider that statistically, people get lighter sentences immediately after a lunch break [1], there's probably some value in removing the human from the equation...
Instead of asking to stop its use, why not ask that it be "supervised" up to the point where its results beat the average judge in a given area of law?
What metric do you use to say it "beats" a human judge?
If thinking about setting bail, isn't the target there to keep the bail amounts (or cases where bail is denied) as low as possible while making sure that most people appear in court?
Here a simple metrics would be the average bail and the percentage of people who appeared on court.
On a job like this, I can't really see how a human could beat a machine. And you don't need any kind of "artificial intelligence". This is just standard statistics stuff that every insurance company and bank does.
>While this can be the fastest route, the GPS’s algorithm does not concern itself with factors important to truckers carrying a heavy load, such as the 43’s 1,300-foot elevation drop over four miles with two sharp turns. I know this is somewhat off topic but the lack of advanced options for GPS routing is such a PITA. It would be trivial to add check-boxes for things like: "I'm towing a trailer, don't make me take du…
These would be good options, but to make it intuitive and not overly complex you probably need to group it into a few major use-cases. I recently rented a car and the built-in nav offered 4 route options that I'm pretty sure (tough to interpret some of the icons) broke down into: optimize for time, optimize for fuel, optimize for distance (don't know when I would choose this one - I would think trying to minimize wear on the car would be better when optimizing for fuel), optimize for turns. I think that last one could be improved for the towing use case you mentioned - I would often trade several minutes to make 3 right turns to avoid a left, but for the most part I'd also just like to get to some road and then not worry about any lane changes for a while. Maybe "fewest turns" and "fewest left turns" should be separate options. There's also a "no tolls" option on every nav system I've used, but I wish you could configure the trade-off there too- there's a dollar amount I'm willing to pay for every 10 minutes it saves me, depending on the day.
>While this can be the fastest route, the GPS’s algorithm does not concern itself with factors important to truckers carrying a heavy load, such as the 43’s 1,300-foot elevation drop over four miles with two sharp turns. I know this is somewhat off topic but the lack of advanced options for GPS routing is such a PITA. It would be trivial to add check-boxes for things like: "I'm towing a trailer, don't make me take du…
Special GPSes for truckers are available from companies like TomTom and Garmin.
If truckers are choosing to save a few hundred bucks by using their smartphones, which don't have the trucker-specific features, surely the fault lies with the trucker for using a consumer-grade product, not with the consumer-grade product for not being professional-grade?
Instead of asking to stop its use, why not ask that it be "supervised" up to the point where its results beat the average judge in a given area of law?
What metric do you use to say it "beats" a human judge?
How about when it gives results that a human judge would give right after having eaten... except consistently, and not only after meals.
Playing devils advocate I'd say that the main problem with employing AI would be that it will how bad decisions humans make. This is exactly the kind of case where computers, just relying on hard data would do much better than humans. The article complains that AI is a black box for the defendant. How is this any different from judge's brain? You can't peek into his mind to figure out what is behind the decision. Jud…
> just relying on hard data would do much better than humans.
Humans can acknowledge and correct for biases in training data much better than computers can.
>While this can be the fastest route, the GPS’s algorithm does not concern itself with factors important to truckers carrying a heavy load, such as the 43’s 1,300-foot elevation drop over four miles with two sharp turns. I know this is somewhat off topic but the lack of advanced options for GPS routing is such a PITA. It would be trivial to add check-boxes for things like: "I'm towing a trailer, don't make me take du…
Have you tried installing an actual GPS navigation app (as opposed to just Google Maps)? At least the last time I used one (I think it was CoPilot a few years back) you could specify stuff like "avoid toll roads", "prefer simplest route", and set the size of your vehicle all in the settings menu.
I don't use my phone for my primary nav device, I use a decade old Garmin for most stuff but if I'm going somewhere I've never been on a more than 1min notice I just Google map it and plan my own route based on that. In urban areas street view is available and I can use that to make sure the Google route and my revisions are sane. In rural areas there aren't as many options or pitfalls so GPS generally works well if. Both the decade old GPS and Google maps have about the same effectiveness when it comes to finding residential addresses on small streets.