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Police used AI facial recognition to wrongly arrest TN woman for crimes in ND

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Re: Police used AI facial recognition to wrongly arrest TN woman for crimes in ND

#11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a tool. Used incorrectly will lead to errors. Just like a hammer, used incorrectly could hit the users finger.

There is enormous variability in how hard a tool is to use correctly, how likely it is to go wrong, and how severe the consequences are. AI has a wide range on all those variables because its use cases vary so widely compared to a hammer. The use case here is police facial recognition. Not hitting nails. The parent wasn't saying "AI is a liability" with no context.

When somebody uses a tool to hurt somebody, they need to be held accountable. If I smack you with a hammer, that needs to be prosecuted. Using AI is no different.

The problem here is incidental to the tool; it was done by the cops and therefore nobody will be held accountable.

Re: Police used AI facial recognition to wrongly arrest TN woman for crimes in ND

#12
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dynamite is a tool. But we don't hand it out to anyone who wants to play with it.

We used to until quite recently. Anybody could buy dynamite at the hardware store. We had to end this because of criminals using it to hurt people.

Look for AI to follow a similar trajectory over time.

Re: Police used AI facial recognition to wrongly arrest TN woman for crimes in ND

#14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We used to until quite recently. Anybody could buy dynamite at the hardware store. We had to end this because of criminals using it to hurt people.

Look for AI to follow a similar trajectory over time.

Yes, regulation is inevitable.

Re: Police used AI facial recognition to wrongly arrest TN woman for crimes in ND

#15

AI is a liability issue waiting to happen. And this is just another example.

It’s a tool. Used incorrectly will lead to errors. Just like a hammer, used incorrectly could hit the users finger.

This tool, however, is specifically built for mass surveillance. It serves no other purpose. The tool is broken, and everybody knows it. The tool makers are at least as guilty as those who use it.

Re: Police used AI facial recognition to wrongly arrest TN woman for crimes in ND

#16
post #6

[flagged]

You think they deliberately chose to do this to a woman? Why?

Probably just reading the room, with States like texas making abortions illegal and allowing random citizens from enforcing that.

Famously, abortions are a woman thing.

Anyway, looking through the facts, it's just some random woman. There's better evidence that these facial recognition systems are much worse at minorities rather than genders.

Interesting biases are own-gendeR: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11841357/

Racial bias:

https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/unmasking-bias...

Miss rates:

https://par.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/10358566

Although you can probably interpret the facts differently, we've seen how any search function gets enshittified: Once people get used to searching for things, they tend to select something that returns results vs something that fails to return results.

Rather than the user blaming themselves, they blame the searcher. As such, any search system overtime will bias towards returning search (eg, Outlook), rather than accuracy.

So if these systems easily miss certain classes of people, women, minorities, they'll more likely be surfaced as inaccurate matches rather than men who'll have a higher confidence of being screened out.

That's how I interpret this 2 second commment.

Re: Police used AI facial recognition to wrongly arrest TN woman for crimes in ND

#17
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a tool. Used incorrectly will lead to errors. Just like a hammer, used incorrectly could hit the users finger.

This tool, however, is specifically built for mass surveillance. It serves no other purpose. The tool is broken, and everybody knows it. The tool makers are at least as guilty as those who use it.

The tool, like Google search, is likely biased towards returning results regardless of confidence.

Re: Police used AI facial recognition to wrongly arrest TN woman for crimes in ND

#18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We used to until quite recently. Anybody could buy dynamite at the hardware store. We had to end this because of criminals using it to hurt people.

Look for AI to follow a similar trajectory over time.

Impossible at this point. You cannot download dynamite.

Re: Police used AI facial recognition to wrongly arrest TN woman for crimes in ND

#19

AI is a liability issue waiting to happen. And this is just another example.

It’s a tool. Used incorrectly will lead to errors. Just like a hammer, used incorrectly could hit the users finger.

What kind of outcome results from misuse? Clearly a hammer's misuse has very little in common with a global, hivemind network used in high-stake campaigns.

Now, if I misused a hammer and it hurt everyone's thumb in my country, then maybe what you said would have some merit.

Otherwise, I'd say it's an extremely lazy argument

Re: Police used AI facial recognition to wrongly arrest TN woman for crimes in ND

#20

AI is a liability issue waiting to happen. And this is just another example.

It's the opposite, it's absolution from liability. "The AI did it" is the ultimate excuse to avoid accepting responsibility and consequences.
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