Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A man spent a year in jail on murder charge that hinged on disputed AI evidence

theregister.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 211 posts

Re: A man spent a year in jail on murder charge that hinged on disputed AI evidence

#41

Post by coldtea »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #3

The article says that employees of the AI company (ShotSpotter) manually reviewed and classified the sounds as gunshots: > records showed that ShotSpotter actually initially picked up what sounded like a firework a mile away, and this was later reclassified by ShotSpotter staff to be a gunshot at the intersection where and when Williams was seen on camera. So the AI didn’t even make the call. The staff did, manually.…

>So the AI didn’t even make the call. The staff did, manually.

(a) The staff of the company who makes the AI, which would have an incentive to make the AI's original judgement appear accurate?

(b) The staff of a company paid by the state/police, which aims to please its customers?

(c) Was the staff trained/experts in recognizing such sounds, or were they random AI company employees, which just made a judgement call? If so, was this call presented as AI-supported to the trial, and was it sold as anything beyond "some devs, no gun experts, mind you, heard this recording and said this must be a gunshot".

Re: A man spent a year in jail on murder charge that hinged on disputed AI evidence

#42

Post by aaron695 »

Do we get the AI doesn't detect location? This is just high school maths, pretty obvious I guess.

The "AI" is just used to see if it's a gunshot for early detection. Obviously anyone can listen in later to the many recording (min 3) to see what they think about the noise.

So the gun shot was in a car, so the mathematics fails. This is why it was withdrawn.

So if you were blaming AI it's important you blame mathematics instead now you are better informed. Because the only thing I hate more than the fake AI industry is people with an inconsistent stance.

Re: A man spent a year in jail on murder charge that hinged on disputed AI evidence

#43

Post by tomxor »

> “I kept trying to figure out, how can they get away with using the technology like that against me,”

I have a bad feeling this will be a theme over the next decade as government and law enforcement around the world starts to integrate "AI" (or rather call it what it is: statistical models + mass surveilence), without enough scepticism built into their process. Some of us know better, but it looks like society and government will still have to learn the hard way that these tools are not a highlight pen, they are a very crude spray can, and even then they will miss spots.

Re: A man spent a year in jail on murder charge that hinged on disputed AI evidence

#44

Post by giantg2 »

stefan_ wrote: post #6
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #3

The article says that employees of the AI company (ShotSpotter) manually reviewed and classified the sounds as gunshots: > records showed that ShotSpotter actually initially picked up what sounded like a firework a mile away, and this was later reclassified by ShotSpotter staff to be a gunshot at the intersection where and when Williams was seen on camera. So the AI didn’t even make the call. The staff did, manually.…

That's the point? These systems invariably turn out to not be any sort of AI at all, but sales people ready to make a call any way their customer (police) wants it made. Later it's presented as AI to a jury. It's basically the same scam as lots of forensics, junk science to get a desired result.

I generally agree, but wouldn't necessarily say a lot of forensics is junk science. The science is generally sound (procedures and theory). Usually it's the prosecutors that present the forensics in a way that misrepresents what the results actually mean. Or lab techs make mistakes or perform misconduct (How to Fix a Drug Scandal on Netflix is interesting).

Re: A man spent a year in jail on murder charge that hinged on disputed AI evidence

#45

Post by giantg2 »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #11
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #3

The article says that employees of the AI company (ShotSpotter) manually reviewed and classified the sounds as gunshots: > records showed that ShotSpotter actually initially picked up what sounded like a firework a mile away, and this was later reclassified by ShotSpotter staff to be a gunshot at the intersection where and when Williams was seen on camera. So the AI didn’t even make the call. The staff did, manually.…

It's scary that prosecutors thought that the ShotSpotter evidence is suitable for a court. It's amazing technology that can help police get to a crime scene quickly but is far too easy to spoof or get the wrong answer due to reflections and other sounds etc. Hopefully cases like this will eventually stop the system being used in court.

"Hopefully cases like this will eventually stop the system being used in court."

Maybe it will stop this system from being used in court, but new ones will take its place. It would be great if we could change the structure of the justice system to prevent these types of issues from popping up again. I have no idea what a solution would look like.

Re: A man spent a year in jail on murder charge that hinged on disputed AI evidence

#46

Post by wyager »

giantg2 wrote: post #44
stefan_ wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the point? These systems invariably turn out to not be any sort of AI at all, but sales people ready to make a call any way their customer (police) wants it made. Later it's presented as AI to a jury. It's basically the same scam as lots of forensics, junk science to get a desired result.

I generally agree, but wouldn't necessarily say a lot of forensics is junk science. The science is generally sound (procedures and theory). Usually it's the prosecutors that present the forensics in a way that misrepresents what the results actually mean. Or lab techs make mistakes or perform misconduct (How to Fix a Drug Scandal on Netflix is interesting).

Fingerprinting is junk science. Polygraphs are junk science. Tons of things that have been or are admissible as evidence are junk science.

Re: A man spent a year in jail on murder charge that hinged on disputed AI evidence

#47

Post by giantg2 »

leephillips wrote: post #35
DaftDank wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a decent summary of court cases related to the dogs: https://www.nlrg.com/criminal-law-legal-research/bid/84670/C... I think this part is pretty key, and has always been a big open question in my mind: "The court further recognized a potential problem in assessing reliability related to handler cuing, as even well-trained dogs could respond to subconscious cues from their handlers. For this reason, the court…

Some departments deploy dogs that alert on all vehicles when they want an excuse to search. In at least one department, this was referred to as “probable cause on four legs”. If judges continue to allow this quality of evidence, the police will continue to abuse the legal environment that creates.

Let's face it - most judges are, at least subconsciously, on the same side as the police and prosecutors even though that's not how the system should work.

Re: A man spent a year in jail on murder charge that hinged on disputed AI evidence

#48

Post by giantg2 »

wyager wrote: post #46
giantg2 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally agree, but wouldn't necessarily say a lot of forensics is junk science. The science is generally sound (procedures and theory). Usually it's the prosecutors that present the forensics in a way that misrepresents what the results actually mean. Or lab techs make mistakes or perform misconduct (How to Fix a Drug Scandal on Netflix is interesting).

Fingerprinting is junk science. Polygraphs are junk science. Tons of things that have been or are admissible as evidence are junk science.

I wouldn't call polygraphs forensics. Most states do not allow them as evidence.

Do you have a link for the fingerprinting claim?

Re: A man spent a year in jail on murder charge that hinged on disputed AI evidence

#49

Post by the-dude »

scoopertrooper wrote: post #31
Crontab wrote: post #9

Coming next year: "A man spent a year in jail on child pornography charge that hinged on disputed Apple CSAM evidence".

For that to happen: they'd have to be matched 30 times, the Apple employees would have to mistakenly manually confirm the match 30 times, and the defence would fail to request to see the underlying images that matched the hashes during discovery. It seems... far fetched.

For now.

Re: A man spent a year in jail on murder charge that hinged on disputed AI evidence

#50

Post by monetus »

giantg2 wrote: post #48
wyager wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fingerprinting is junk science. Polygraphs are junk science. Tons of things that have been or are admissible as evidence are junk science.

I wouldn't call polygraphs forensics. Most states do not allow them as evidence. Do you have a link for the fingerprinting claim?

(Not who you responded to)

https://www.crammlawfirm.com/fingerprint-match-jails-innocen...

This isn't the case I originally recalled, and doesn't say how many points were matched, but I remember a 5 point match being used to convict a person who was later proven innocent.

Post reply on HN