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Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first

reuters.com

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Re: Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first

#371

Post by [deleted] »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #363
bhntr3 wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the wikipedia article for the fallacious argument I used and which you're critiquing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum Here is some statistical evidence for systemic racism: https://www.businessinsider.com/us-systemic-racism-in-charts... (Shockingly this is actually pretty good despite being from Business Insider) Honestly, I'd just edit the link at this point if I could since it seems to ha…

> Here is some statistical evidence for systemic racism None of those charts appear to be controlled for confounders. Doing that correctly is hard, but not doing it at all is ridiculous. It allows you to "prove" that many engineering schools (with majority-white admissions boards) are racist against white people in favor of Asians, or that "racism" exists to the benefit of first generation African immigrants who by m…

[deleted]

Re: Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first

#372

Post by lordnacho »

godelski wrote: post #99

Looking at all these comments, did no one watch Minority Report ? The whole film was about the difficulties and ethics of "precrime" and arresting people before they even committed a crime. Obviously we aren't doing that here, but stories often exaggerate a bit. I'd also like to add another good series that explores this topic even more than Minority Report : Psycho-Pass . Psycho-Pass is more extreme in that there's…

I haven't seen it since I saw it in cinemas, but thinking back, shouldn't the precog's visions be used as a bayesian prior? If they see a guy who is just done shooting someone, shouldn't that be the starting point for gathering a little more evidence? If it turns out he doesn't have a gun or training in how to use one, maybe let him go? If you see he goes to shop for a gun and spends some days on the range, evidence is stronger by any account.

If he then starts sending threatening letters to his ex with cut up old bits of newspaper, that's some more evidence.

Maybe do a RCT when goes to visit her, then you can save half of them potentially. It's a bit grating how they skip around the subject of how exactly they know their prediction method works.

Re: Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first

#373

Post by vmception »

ryankemper wrote: post #357
vmception wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Swing and a miss, overpolicing has nothing to do with violent crime. It has to do with nonviolent infractions that marginalize people to begin with. Being actually caught with illicit substances , or caught for the unpaid ticket. These things are evenly distributed across society, but when overly targeting minorities it further marginalizes them. Exhibit A) YOU might not be able to relate to people that routinely hav…

> These things are evenly distributed across society This is an unproven assertion. You should provide evidence of it, because on its face it is a completely ludicrous claim. Rates of illicit drug activity, violent crime, etc are _not_ evenly distributed in society. Not even close. > Exhibit B) Silicon Valley openly brags about microdosing acid to perform at work at their half million $ jobs. Overpolicing would ensna…

Yes it doesnt match your worldview, consider seeing if you can corroborate it. I know strange concept for you to find a source instead of hoping to pick apart the person that posted, but you might be surprised

But regarding the rebuttal to microdosing users, if they were getting randomly frisked and randomly tested and randomly stopped for “broken” taillights, because the algorithm said so, they would be getting caught and reinforcing the algorithm and human biases

This is what is happening disproportionately to some demographics that dont have inherently different behavior from other demographics

Re: Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first

#374

Post by Misdicorl »

ryankemper wrote: post #359
Misdicorl wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There's a worrying trend in the conversation these days that has shifted from "there's a serious problem with racism in how police go about their job" to "we need less police". Folks in neighborhoods living with the constant threat of gang violence don't have the luxury to sit in their aeron chairs and argue about defunding the police. They face the very real threat of themselves or their loved ones being shot on th…

So, you haven't provided _any_ citations or even vague references to Wikipedia articles, rather you just called their opinion FUD and left it at that. How am I, a 3rd-party observer of this thread, supposed to extract any value from such statements? The person you were quoting did not provide rock-solid proof that having police helps reduce violence, but they did provide a citation showing that: > Violence against pe…

My job isn't to respond in detail to FUD. Thats how trolls win; by engaging people who are willing to put in that effort while they can respond with anything resembling coherence. My job is to point out the FUD so people might not notice (for whatever reason) can at least be aware of its presence (or if in doubt, check some other reputable source themselves).

You don't need data on this one though. What the fuck is calling the police going to do to prevent violence after a gang has done a drive by shooting? Use your god damn brain

Re: Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first

#375

Post by iamstupidsimple »

thebradbain wrote: post #354
starkd wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure You can always separate out violent from non-violent events. The police are expected to deal with a whole community in a holistic way.

Why does a victim of sexual assault need to report to someone who has a gun? Why does a wellness check need to be performed with a gun? Why does a standard highway patrolman or cop doing routine speed traps need a gun? Why does every cop in a school need a gun? Why is the gun the constant?

> Why does a standard highway patrolman or cop doing routine speed traps need a gun?

Because this is statistically the form of policing most likely to get cops shot.

> Why does every cop in a school need a gun?

A symptom of America's school shooting problem. When your child is being gunned down you'll probably wish the police there were armed.

Re: Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first

#376

Post by andrewprock »

umvi wrote: post #368
thebradbain wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does a victim of sexual assault need to report to someone who has a gun? Why does a wellness check need to be performed with a gun? Why does a standard highway patrolman or cop doing routine speed traps need a gun? Why does every cop in a school need a gun? Why is the gun the constant?

> Why does a standard highway patrolman or cop doing routine speed traps need a gun? Because civilians have shot and killed police during traffic stops? And not just with guns. I seem to remember a road rage case in Colorado where the raging driver shot and killed another driver with a crossbow.

It's not clear how "there is a non-zero chance a motorist has a gun" leads to the conclusion that "all traffic enforcement must have a gun".

Re: Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first

#377

Post by banads »

Misdicorl wrote: post #374
ryankemper wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, you haven't provided _any_ citations or even vague references to Wikipedia articles, rather you just called their opinion FUD and left it at that. How am I, a 3rd-party observer of this thread, supposed to extract any value from such statements? The person you were quoting did not provide rock-solid proof that having police helps reduce violence, but they did provide a citation showing that: > Violence against pe…

My job isn't to respond in detail to FUD. Thats how trolls win; by engaging people who are willing to put in that effort while they can respond with anything resembling coherence. My job is to point out the FUD so people might not notice (for whatever reason) can at least be aware of its presence (or if in doubt, check some other reputable source themselves). You don't need data on this one though. What the fuck is c…

>What the fuck is calling the police going to do to prevent violence after a gang has done a drive by shooting?

To find the criminals that did that and put them in prison to prevent them from doing that again?

Re: Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first

#378

Post by lordnacho »

One issue I haven't heard much about is what misconceptions people have about AI/ML in general. This kind of thing only makes it worse.

There's a lot of ways an ML system can go wrong, and it won't be obvious to everyone who uses it. Dataset badly sampled? Cop ain't gonna know that. In fact, from his POV he's using fancy new equipment that the department has paid some highly qualified consultants for.

What I worry about is we have actual data scientists like the guys at top unis who teach and know how the sausage is made.

And then we have some consultant people who kinda know how to shove some data into a model and get a result out. I'm not saying they're totally incompetent, but their incentives are misaligned. They want the data to mean some things that it can't mean, in terms of epistemology, or in terms of level of confidence. You could very easily bake a false correlation causation into this kind of thing, and use it to arrest whoever you like. This is especially true if the guy you're selling it to also has wrong incentives.

And the guy at the bottom using this model ends up thinking that he has a magic box that tells him who is gonna be a criminal in the future. When he arrests someone, it's a very deep explanation why it isn't the way he thought, something I could see the judge not getting.

That is not to say such a system is never going to work anywhere, but if you're operating a predictive system you need to know a bunch of stuff about it to do so responsibly.

Re: Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first

#379

Post by a1369209993 »

whatshisface wrote: post #193
bhntr3 wrote: post #184

The problem with predictive policing is in the name. Inference (ML) predicts the future from the past. If the past is racist, then inference will create a racist future. Since racism is systemic[1], especially when it comes to policing, predictive policing is actively working against an anti-racist future. There may be statistical ways to factor out systemic racism. There are two reasons I don't think that works: 1.…

To [1]: Totally abstracted from anything you said, a poll that people believe something does not in any way resemble evidence that it is true. For example, only 8% of Jehovas Witnesses[2] believe that humans evolved. Is that evidence that JWs didn't evolve? "If you don't believe this you're in the minority now" has never in history been a good argument for anything, even if you are using it to try and prove something…

From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23655876 :

> >"If you don't believe this you're in the minority now" has never in history been a good argument for anything

> I hear you. I originally had "and you don't really like minorities do you?" but thought it was a bit below the belt. I guess without the cruel dig it's not as relevant though.

> I'm not confident that evidence will change the mind of someone who continues to deny systemic racism though. But social proof is very powerful even if it isn't evidence. I don't mind if people believe the right thing for the wrong reasons.

There are plenty of minorities I don't really like. Such as police officers. Or sociopaths. But that's not because they're minorities, and given a choice between a belief that's popular and false versus one that's unpopular and true, I'll pick true one hundred times out of one hundred, and only grudgingly comprehend the distinction.

Anything that can make people believe the right thing for the wrong reasons is just as effective (and usually more so) at making them believe the wrong thing for the wrong reasons, and needs to opposed regardless of whether it happens to have invoked "even a stopped clock is right twice a day" at the moment.

Re: Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first

#380

Post by rudolph9 »

agilebyte wrote: post #349
rudolph9 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? What is your though process on this?

Given a choice between two neighbourhoods, would I want to move to one that has grow ops or a high rate of social services checkups? Some of that data is already easily available and I know it is being used by real estate agents already. The people that can avoid these neighbourhoods will, which leaves only those that can't. Gentrification. The neighbourhood I grew up in was heavily mixed (along social strata) which…

> The people that can avoid these neighbourhoods will, which leaves only those that can't.

You’re describing people who are stuck in impoverished (correct me if I’m mistaken) where but gentrifications refer to the restoration and upgrading of deteriorated urban property by middle-class or affluent people, often resulting in displacement of lower-income people.

Gentrification has a lot to do with location in proximity to a city center, transportation, waterfront, etc. Just because a neighborhood is safer doesn’t necessarily mean wealthy people will move there, drive up property values indirectly forcing out the poorer residents.

Look at Japan, the country has a universally low crime rate and poor areas are still relatively cost effective for low income residents. https://www.quora.com/Which-part-of-Japan-is-viewed-as-the-p...

I’m not saying this won’t accelerate gentrification of desirable areas currently full of crime in-turn currently avoided wealthier people. But a cost effective solution which results in a net decrease in crime (not a zero sum game where a neighborhood gentrifies and the crime just shifts elsewhere), would likely benefit mostly lower income individuals then most.

Obviously solution nothing is universal beneficial and there is the obvious concern of humans progressing being enslave by black-box AI systems but it has potential to be very beneficial if rolled out in a publicly auditable way.

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