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China using big data to detain people before crime is committed

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Re: China using big data to detain people before crime is committed

#81

Post by JumpCrisscross »

rayalez wrote: post #66
mc32 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. If they are capturing these people because they will have committed a crime and that in and of itself is crime then its not reducing crime. It's possible that once enough people who on balance might commit a crime are arrested or impeded, then crime will indeed decrease.

I think you've missed the point. Even if this system works, people who have not committed a crime (yet) are innocent. Taking an innocent person, and improsoning him against his will is a crime, pretty extreme one. Even if this system works really well, it's hard to imagine that the crimes it prevents can be more extreme than the crimes it commits.

> Taking an innocent person, and improsoning him against his will is a crime

Every criminal justice system has to balance (1) the risk of convicting the innocent, (2) the risk of letting the true crime-committer commit additional crimes (due to not being caught or caught later), and (3) the risk of being abused. We don’t like pre-crime convictions because we believe risks 1 and 3 outweigh any gains in 2. A culture with a different balance of risks, however, could come to a different but consistent conclusion. I don’t like that conclusion. But it’s at least debatable. Putting political enemies in jail is not.

Re: China using big data to detain people before crime is committed

#82

Post by EggsOnToast »

drb91 wrote: post #65
davesque wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would have agreed with you before November 2016. Now, I'm being completely honest in saying I'm not so sure.

Oh come on, neoliberals aren’t much better. They’re two feet to the left of the right wingers when it comes to surveillance, policing, funding the military & pro-military nationalistic rhetoric, with industry hands in their pocket, and their own hands in the media. The seeds for fascism, authoritarianism, and cults of personality are well rooted in the senior offices of congress on both sides. It has been ripe for ab…

This. Obama radically expanded the surveillance state as did Bush and arguably Clinton abided it even if he didn't outright affect it in the same way as his successors. I'm not going to make the statement that the Chinese surveillance state is wrong, because in this instance I think it's irrelevant to the greater point that its execution is a totally different beast from the government surveillance that takes place in the USA. Whether or not one party in the USA is worse than another, neither is comparable in this context to the CPC.

Re: China using big data to detain people before crime is committed

#83

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

dekhn wrote: post #69
leggomylibro wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough, I'm not very steeped in the intricacies of Lord of the Rings. I got the feeling that it was the nature of their power and omniscience that corrupted most individuals who used them, sort of like the Ring, but that could be completely wrong.

That's completely wrong. The Palantiri were created by the Noldor (one of the powerful old races of elves) and used without corruption, and then given to the Numenoreans as a gift; they were used for a long time without corruption. They were so powerful that even Sauron could not make arbitrary images appear. But the weak-minded were easily influenced by him through it; not through the nature of the stones. The ring…

The exception being Tom Bombadil, but he is a strange creature.

Re: China using big data to detain people before crime is committed

#84

Post by visarga »

Dangeranger wrote: post #7
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #6

Does it actually work? Or are the "criminals" just social activists?

They are not "criminals" if they never committed a crime, they are people being detained based on probabilities.

> they are people being detained based on probabilities

probacriminals

Re: China using big data to detain people before crime is committed

#85

Post by hrktb »

refurb wrote: post #64
davesque wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would have agreed with you before November 2016. Now, I'm being completely honest in saying I'm not so sure.

Really? If I recall, HN was blowing up at all the surveillance and privacy concerns under Obama. Is it really worse under Trump?

From a non US POV, under Obama people seemed disappointed and betrayed by how a man that they saw as on their side was not doing the right things in their eyes.

Under Trump it feels like those same people mostly gave up.

Re: China using big data to detain people before crime is committed

#86

Post by visarga »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #23
Dangeranger wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not "criminals" if they never committed a crime, they are people being detained based on probabilities.

Has it had an effect on crime rates? If so, this is interesting. It means crime is predictable based on the inputs the system is measuring. It also means the Chinese AI effort is more fruitful than I expected it to be. If this is reducing crime, then we have a discussion of trade-offs. That is interesting, and potentially nuanced. If it's the latter, however, this is not interesting and there is no reasonable discuss…

Have you every lived under a totalitarian regime that uses intense surveillance?

This system is causing a chilling effect on creativity, differentiation and individualism. It forces people to hide their real thoughts and live a life of constant pretence/lies. It makes the safe-space (the creative-space) to shrink to the interior of one's head. It destroys the ability of population to protest and thus participate in the political life of the country.

Re: China using big data to detain people before crime is committed

#87

Post by ardit33 »

ejlangev wrote: post #57

It's a shame we moved a lot of the US industrial base to an authoritarian and potentially hostile country like China. A bit scary to think of the generation or two of people who won't have the knowledge to manufacture things should they ever need to because of conflict in some form. Seems like it reduces any leverage the US has for holding China accountable for much that it does.

I disagree.... the US was shit at producing weapons before WW2 (apart from Carriers), yet within two years was to able to be the number one mass producer in quantity, and eventually on quality.

When there is both political and economical will, the country will be able to mass-produce again. Right now there is no economic incentive to do so.

Re: China using big data to detain people before crime is committed

#88

Post by sjg007 »

drb91 wrote: post #65
davesque wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would have agreed with you before November 2016. Now, I'm being completely honest in saying I'm not so sure.

Oh come on, neoliberals aren’t much better. They’re two feet to the left of the right wingers when it comes to surveillance, policing, funding the military & pro-military nationalistic rhetoric, with industry hands in their pocket, and their own hands in the media. The seeds for fascism, authoritarianism, and cults of personality are well rooted in the senior offices of congress on both sides. It has been ripe for ab…

I think the issue is that Trump and the State department are not going to do anything about a strongman in China. Trump likes strongmen and hasn't doing anything to curb Duerte, Putin and now Xi in China.

Re: China using big data to detain people before crime is committed

#90

Post by drb91 »

sjg007 wrote: post #88
drb91 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh come on, neoliberals aren’t much better. They’re two feet to the left of the right wingers when it comes to surveillance, policing, funding the military & pro-military nationalistic rhetoric, with industry hands in their pocket, and their own hands in the media. The seeds for fascism, authoritarianism, and cults of personality are well rooted in the senior offices of congress on both sides. It has been ripe for ab…

I think the issue is that Trump and the State department are not going to do anything about a strongman in China. Trump likes strongmen and hasn't doing anything to curb Duerte, Putin and now Xi in China.

Well, that may be true. I'm not sure what another state department might have done in this position against Xi, though; this is a continuation of politics that hardly offered Obama straightforward leverage either.
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