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

121–130 of 211 posts

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

#121

Post by MeinBlutIstBlau »

emodendroket wrote: post #54

I’m not a Luddite by any means but it is time to be more honest about the limitations of AI.

The only time I hear about people who talk about AI are average joes, ignorant journalists, generic business analysts, and upper management that don't know anything about programming. I wish I could point to these people and say "look at video game AI, we can't even make those without it cheating or following a routine to simulate human playstyles. What makes you think we can do that in real life without doing the same?"

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

#122

Post by bryan0 »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #95
bryan0 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The headline is: > A man spent a year in jail on a murder charge that hinged on disputed AI evidence. But after the reading the article, the evidence seemed irrelevant? Maybe the headline should have been: > AI evidence was manually reclassified after human review in murder case

Incorrect > Prosecutors said ShotSpotter picked up a gunshot sound where Williams was seen on surveillance camera footage in his car, putting it all forward as proof that Williams shot Herring right there and then. The police used the altered location of the shot to imply that the defendant's story about what happened wasn't true. Which was that another person in another var at a different location did the shooting.…

> The police used the altered location of the shot to imply that the defendant's story about what happened wasn't true. Which was that another person in another var at a different location did the shooting.

Ok that would make more sense, but I definitely did not take that away from the article. I’m sure there are better sources on this case though.

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

#123

Post by colejohnson66 »

emodendroket wrote: post #116
giantg2 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't exactly support your claims for most of forensics. If you read/skim the NAS report these articles are based on, you will see that much of the issue is not with the underlying science, but rather in the "interpretation" part. Yes, the odontology seems to be unsupported. But even the fire analysis that you list as an example is said to have a scientific basis like chemistry, but that the interpretation par…

It may very well be the case that a version of fire analysis that is scientifically rigorous can be done, but this would have nothing to do with how it is typically practiced.

Which is what @giantg2 said:

> 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.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28265884

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

#124

Post by qayxc »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #88
setr wrote: post #60

It seems to me jail time without verdict is the real problem in this scenario — it’s not clear to me how that’s not “guilty until proven innocent”

Precisely. This happens to people all the time regardless of the technology involved. Being suspected of a crime should never ruin your life. At most it should pause your life. House arrest with deferral of your debts and obligations and mandatory reinstatement of your job if you are exhonorated or the charges are removed seems like what you would need at a minimum to live up to "innocent until found guilty".

That's exactly what judges decide to do if certain criteria are met, though.

The person in this case, however, had a criminal history including attempted homicide so the judge decided to opt for detention while awaiting trial instead.

Sounds like perfectly normal procedure to me and happens other countries as well.

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

#125

Post by SkeuomorphicBee »

tzs wrote: post #80
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.

> Fingerprinting is junk science. How then do you explain the success of Touch ID on Apple devices and the equivalent systems on other phones and tablets? Random people can't just walk up and unlock a Touch ID device with their fingerprint, which suggests that fingerprints are in fact a very good way to tell people apart. Yes, it is possible to make a fake fingerprint that Touch ID will not be able to distinguish fro…

> How then do you explain the success of Touch ID on Apple devices and the equivalent systems on other phones and tablets?

Because on those devices the fingerprint is only used as a second factor (the first factor being physical possession of a particular device).

If Apple used fingerprints like law enforcement do, that is running a fingerprint against the big DB of all prints, then they would certainly get some arbitrary matches.

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

#126

Post by bagels »

tzs wrote: post #80
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.

> Fingerprinting is junk science. How then do you explain the success of Touch ID on Apple devices and the equivalent systems on other phones and tablets? Random people can't just walk up and unlock a Touch ID device with their fingerprint, which suggests that fingerprints are in fact a very good way to tell people apart. Yes, it is possible to make a fake fingerprint that Touch ID will not be able to distinguish fro…

How many people have you let try the unlock your device with their fingerprint? Tens or hundreds of Millions? That'd be a closer comparison for how a search of fingerprint database work.

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

#127

Post by dragonwriter »

arp242 wrote: post #84
dragonwriter wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fingerprints aren't "junk science" Fingerprints are directly-recorded facts. What may be junk science is what expert witnesses present about the interpretation of fingerprints. > The problem is that many juries, judges, prosecutors, and even defenders forget about this. Juries as triers of fact, and judges insofar as they are ruling on the facts of the case, aren't, in any case, supposed to allow themselves fo be g…

> Fingerprints are directly-recorded facts. That's not really how it works; false positives exist, especially if you consider that a lot of times you have incomplete or smudged fingerprints and there is actually some amount of subjectivity involved in determining a match. See e.g. [1]: "only two properly designed studies of latent fingerprint analysis had been conducted. These both found the rate of false matches (kn…

> That's not really how it works

Yes, it is.

> false positives exist

Matches (positive or negative) are not the same thing as fingerprints. Fingerprints are directly recorded facts. Matches are matters of interpretation (the fact of a match reported by a particular system is a distinct direct fact from the fingerprint itself, but again the significance is...what expert testimony exists to establish or challenge.)

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

#128

Post by R0b0t1 »

leephillips wrote: post #38

This year in jail was awaiting the “speedy trial” that is supposed to be guaranteed by the US Constitution. I think that in itself is as much of an issue as the quality of the evidence. How can the government justify taking year away from the life of a man who has not been convicted of anything?

It's typical for a defendant to waive their right to a speedy trial. If you don't waive it typically you get the book thrown at you and in the little time you have to prepare, something sticks. I agree this should be changed but there is not much political will behind it, as prosecutors view it as a necessity to try everyone fairly. The real solution is to not bring so many pointless cases to trial.

Knowing that, I think I would demand a speedy trial, but most people have horrible lawyers.

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

#129

Post by ClumsyPilot »

Aerroon wrote: post #67
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It may not be right to blame AI, but it's certainly the case that they were presenting it as "the system says there was a shot fired here." I think a crucial distinction is to clarify who “they” is: Who was making the claim? From the article, it seems that the prosecutors may have been the ones exaggerating the evidence: > Prosecutors said ShotSpotter picked up a gunshot sound where Williams was seen on surveillanc…

> I think a crucial distinction is to clarify who “they” is: Who was making the claim? From the article, it seems that the prosecutors may have been the ones exaggerating the evidence: The prosecutors are the "they". The further removed you get from people who know the 'AI' the more the validity of the evidence provided by the AI relies merely on what others have said. The people working on the system know that it ca…

>Down the line people will go "the machine says so, therefore it must be so".

Thats the real feature of AI, devision laundering: a flawed decision made by someone for their own gain now appears impartial and trustworthy, and come wothout accountability

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

#130

Post by ClumsyPilot »

stelcodes wrote: post #111
leephillips wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your distress at the state of the justice system, but it doesn’t make sense to say that someone was on death row without having been convicted. The article you link to explains that his convictions were overturned. Although I would never rely on information in a Wikipedia article, you did link to it, so presumably you find it credible.

Every time he was “convicted”, the prosecution was found to be in blatant violation of laws on appeal. They intimidated witnesses, kept black people off the jury, and more. So no, he was never rightfully convicted! The prosecution broke so many laws, way more than Curtis Flowers ever did! And they just did it over and over again for 20 years. None of them have faced any consequences. They effectively imprisoned an in…

What you are describing is different from convicting someone withoht trial, it's way worse.
Post reply on HN