Live data from Hacker News

MTA's A.I. bus cameras issue mistaken parking violations

nbcnewyork.com

51–60 of 114 posts

Re: MTA's A.I. bus cameras issue mistaken parking violations

#51

If you prevent government from launching technologies for every software bug / mistake, you will get a bloated government which will do everything manually increasing it's cost to taxpayers and decrease in quality of services. The key is still to launch fast and iterate over bugs especially in the realm of traffic / parking violations which at the most causes annoyances to people ( I mean the same people are willing…

> you will get a bloated government which will do everything manually Like creating useless bus lanes? Then creating useless programs to write tickets to those "parked illegally" in bus lanes? Then creating useless digital waste finding a "better way" to write these pointless tickets over a pointless lane? > The key is still to launch fast The key is to get rid of things that don't work and can't provide worthwhile v…

The bus lanes are not useless, they have measurably improved commutes, and parking in them is in fact illegal, so why the air quotes?

Re: MTA's A.I. bus cameras issue mistaken parking violations

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you will get a bloated government which will do everything manually Like creating useless bus lanes? Then creating useless programs to write tickets to those "parked illegally" in bus lanes? Then creating useless digital waste finding a "better way" to write these pointless tickets over a pointless lane? > The key is still to launch fast The key is to get rid of things that don't work and can't provide worthwhile v…

The bus lanes are not useless, they have measurably improved commutes, and parking in them is in fact illegal, so why the air quotes?

> they have measurably improved commutes

By how much? 1%, 5%... or? It's measured so what's the measurement?

> and parking in them is in fact illegal

And all you have to prove this is a snapshot. Which are not accurate and is the basis for the entire thread here. And people who didn't commit any crime have been charged. So there is clearly an open question as to how many of these pictures appear to be illegal versus how many actually are.

> so why the air quotes?

Those are actual quotes and you've projected your assumptions into my actions. Did it harm your ability to understand what I wrote? If not then why make an issue of it?

Re: MTA's A.I. bus cameras issue mistaken parking violations

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not much different from anything involving the legal system. If everyone charged with anything ranging from a fine to a criminal misdemeanor just requested either a trial or an administrative hearing, the system would vanish overnight. I did once discover that in at least one jurisdiction criminal charges were not guaranteed a jury trial, only a bench trial was given. The judge in that circumstance is the prosec…

> I did once discover that in at least one jurisdiction criminal charges were not guaranteed a jury trial, only a bench trial was given. The judge in that circumstance is the prosecutor from another nearby jurisdiction. What? In the US? Where?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth_Amendment_to_the_United_...

TL;DR the Sixth's right to jury trial doesn't apply for criminal charges carrying less than sixth months maximum sentence—even if there are multiple such charges that may add up to more than that.

Gonna go out on a limb and guess that plenty of US jurisdictions don't voluntarily pay extra money to make those jury trials if they aren't forced to.

Re: MTA's A.I. bus cameras issue mistaken parking violations

#54
post #25
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bad training data is pretty much AI related. People outside AI research expect good answers no matter what you give to AI. Or to put it that way, wrong instructions are still natural intelligence related

It's a bit older than that: "On two occasions I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." - Charles Babbage

Babbage is wrong!

He is answering what a computation engine will do, but not what a "wise" person would do, which is the _the_ test of AI.

The goal of wisdom (and good teaching) is to first correct the faulty assumptions of the questioner that leads them to ask a bad question, and then once they ask a good question, then and _only_ then, provide the answer to the question.

Re: MTA's A.I. bus cameras issue mistaken parking violations

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine the actual cameras are a relatively small part of the overall price

also keep in mind this is automotive grade stuff in relatively harsh conditions (the front of a bus); it needs to be more rugged than your average camera

Surely it's just a dash cam with a button and maybe some kind of comms module. There are many mass-market dashcams with a 'record' button that saves a time period before and after pressing the button, it's pretty standard usage. The only new thing is sending the video on, and making sure the time/location are correct (many cameras do this via GPS already - standard usage). I'm not seeing what is so expensive or unique.

Very profitable by the sounds of it!!!

Re: MTA's A.I. bus cameras issue mistaken parking violations

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I did once discover that in at least one jurisdiction criminal charges were not guaranteed a jury trial, only a bench trial was given. The judge in that circumstance is the prosecutor from another nearby jurisdiction. What? In the US? Where?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth_Amendment_to_the_United_... TL;DR the Sixth's right to jury trial doesn't apply for criminal charges carrying less than sixth months maximum sentence—even if there are multiple such charges that may add up to more than that. Gonna go out on a limb and guess that plenty of US jurisdictions don't voluntarily pay extra money to make those jury trials if they aren't forced to.

Frankly I think that's bullshit. If it's not worth paying for the trial for it's not worth prosecuting as criminal.

Re: MTA's A.I. bus cameras issue mistaken parking violations

#57

When I lived in California years ago I had a custom 2-letter plate. I gave the car to a relative who switched its registration to another state. Years later, I got a toll demand from an express lane around LA that had a false positive scan of my plate number—someone else’s partially obscured maybe? I argued the car was registered elsewhere and wasn’t driven in CA, and they denied the appeal. I asked for evidence but…

Interesting how different our experiences were in a similar situation. I had a false positive FasTrak ticket from the San Diego area for a timeframe I was living in Sacramento that was tossed (including gigantic late penalties) after a phone call explaining I was at work hundreds of miles away at the time. I was all ready to go with Google Maps Timeline location data but they just took me at my word when they saw whe…

The person on the other end of the phone has near complete discretion and the process is still not auditable or verifiable to you. They could make whatever they want up and you wouldn't know.

You probably got lucky and called in a month when budgets weren't tight and they weren't trying hard to squeeze out every penny so they just waved it instead of giving you the runaround.

Re: MTA's A.I. bus cameras issue mistaken parking violations

#58

When I lived in California years ago I had a custom 2-letter plate. I gave the car to a relative who switched its registration to another state. Years later, I got a toll demand from an express lane around LA that had a false positive scan of my plate number—someone else’s partially obscured maybe? I argued the car was registered elsewhere and wasn’t driven in CA, and they denied the appeal. I asked for evidence but…

I got hit by this too - a "toll evasion" from a similar looking plate (and E vs an F), but a completely different style of car (Truck vs Hatchback) let alone different make/model.

And I guess as they drive through 3 cameras that all made the same mistake, I received 3 notices of "Toll Evasion" on the same day for incidents that happened within a few hours of each other.

And the third included a notice that said as this was my third violation, they may file a lien against my vehicle and repossess it.

Sure, they immediately dropped them when I challenged them, but I often spend multiple months away from the country, I can certainly see me coming back to a repossessed car if I hadn't challenged it in the allowed time.

Re: MTA's A.I. bus cameras issue mistaken parking violations

#59

Some years back Santa Cruz updated the meter maids / parking enforcement to GPS enabled smart devices and they would still drive around, get out, take pictures (when someone was in violation). My wife and I were sitting outside a restaurant where such a vehicle was being photo'd. This particular meter person was known to be .. not nice. While said person was behind vehicle (old vw bus) and out of site of the meter, w…

I know someone who deflated the tires on their Jeep to get around a violation ticket for bumper height (i.e. the kind of thing they only ever enforce as a pretext for fishing). He asked the cop to re-measure. Cop was confused and mad.

Re: MTA's A.I. bus cameras issue mistaken parking violations

#60

in other recent news, the Alameda County Transit system has enabled "AI" cameras on busses, that will auto-generate violations for civilian vehicles in the bus stop, in the new fast transit dedicated lanes, and who knows where else. In previous times, Alameda County special officers would issue $500 tickets for letting a passenger out of a private vehicle within a bus stop area. In case you don't know, the bus stops…

the point of the cameras, to some degree, is to make the common violations stop happening. you don't really have a right to pull over anywhere you want in 'a busy downtown area'.

That's not really a compelling argument in a reality in which we allow people to just stop at the end of merge ramps because "whoops, poor/no planning".
Post reply on HN