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

Police in England and Wales told to halt AI use in court statements

ft.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 57 posts

Re: Police in England and Wales told to halt AI use in court statements

#31

Post by ggm »

embedding-shape wrote: post #3

> [...] he had intervened at forces that were deploying commercially available AI tools before they had been properly assessed [...] “All forces have got a good policy on the use of Copilot,” Murray said. “All forces will have a policy that says, ‘Check everything that it produces’.” Not only are they using AI before they've properly assessed them, they also end up using Copilot which must be one of the worse AIs cur…

This will self correct in a longer timescale as police prosecution fails to maintain a conviction rate and people ask why.

Hardly ideal but this isn't a static problem. Either the work gets done or cases get lost on slop.

Re: Police in England and Wales told to halt AI use in court statements

#32

Post by ajb »

kerabatsos wrote: post #10
embedding-shape wrote: post #3

> [...] he had intervened at forces that were deploying commercially available AI tools before they had been properly assessed [...] “All forces have got a good policy on the use of Copilot,” Murray said. “All forces will have a policy that says, ‘Check everything that it produces’.” Not only are they using AI before they've properly assessed them, they also end up using Copilot which must be one of the worse AIs cur…

The mindset must be that if you use AI (which I happen to advocate for) you are also responsible for the output, if you use the output publicly. AI is obviously very powerful if used responsibly - the human is responsible for it once it is used - however it’s used.

I appreciate the sentiment, but this is exactly like the expectation that people can be responsible for intervening when self-driving or driver-assistance goes wrong. Human brains are strongly driven to conserve energy. If nothing seems to be happening - when errors become less and less frequent - the more difficult it becomes to guarantee intervention, and the less practiced the human will be at doing so.

I have written factory tests, in which I injected errors to make sure that the factory workers didn't develop "click next" syndrome and actually noticed errors. That's what you'd have to do. It's hard to get an organisation to stick to that, when they add up the time they're paying for in detecting fake errors.

Re: Police in England and Wales told to halt AI use in court statements

#33

Post by lucaslazarus »

prymitive wrote: post #15
Aurornis wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “All forces will have a policy that says, ‘Check everything that it produces’.” Everyone I talk to (including outside of tech) is going through this phase at their companies. It’s not working. Checking the output seems like a simple request, but the question becomes: Check against what? If the police are making a document that sources from another report that another officer used AI to produce from their notes whic…

One can ask, what is a practical difference between “Check everything that it produces” and “Do all the work yourself”? It’s not typing that’s the bottleneck, at least not often, so this is essentially assuming that you can do all the needed work without actually doing it, which is obviously wishful thinking.

Depends, is P = NP?

Re: Police in England and Wales told to halt AI use in court statements

#34

Post by AJRF »

If you listen closely to UK cabinet ministers you can intuit that they are being horse whispered into handing over vast sums of taxpayer money to firms for AI who are promising solutions to the productivity gap (chasm?) that the UK is plagued by.

I can say with certainty lots of money will be spent, and the gap will not be filled. I would bet my life on it.

Re: Police in England and Wales told to halt AI use in court statements

#35

Post by throaway197512 »

Aurornis wrote: post #12
embedding-shape wrote: post #3

> [...] he had intervened at forces that were deploying commercially available AI tools before they had been properly assessed [...] “All forces have got a good policy on the use of Copilot,” Murray said. “All forces will have a policy that says, ‘Check everything that it produces’.” Not only are they using AI before they've properly assessed them, they also end up using Copilot which must be one of the worse AIs cur…

> “All forces will have a policy that says, ‘Check everything that it produces’.” Everyone I talk to (including outside of tech) is going through this phase at their companies. It’s not working. Checking the output seems like a simple request, but the question becomes: Check against what? If the police are making a document that sources from another report that another officer used AI to produce from their notes whic…

its just duplicating the work at that point, because you have to check everything anyways

Re: Police in England and Wales told to halt AI use in court statements

#36

Post by classified »

ggm wrote: post #31
embedding-shape wrote: post #3

> [...] he had intervened at forces that were deploying commercially available AI tools before they had been properly assessed [...] “All forces have got a good policy on the use of Copilot,” Murray said. “All forces will have a policy that says, ‘Check everything that it produces’.” Not only are they using AI before they've properly assessed them, they also end up using Copilot which must be one of the worse AIs cur…

This will self correct in a longer timescale as police prosecution fails to maintain a conviction rate and people ask why. Hardly ideal but this isn't a static problem. Either the work gets done or cases get lost on slop.

Not if solicitors and judges too offload to AI.

Re: Police in England and Wales told to halt AI use in court statements

#37

Post by misnome »

Aurornis wrote: post #12
embedding-shape wrote: post #3

> [...] he had intervened at forces that were deploying commercially available AI tools before they had been properly assessed [...] “All forces have got a good policy on the use of Copilot,” Murray said. “All forces will have a policy that says, ‘Check everything that it produces’.” Not only are they using AI before they've properly assessed them, they also end up using Copilot which must be one of the worse AIs cur…

> “All forces will have a policy that says, ‘Check everything that it produces’.” Everyone I talk to (including outside of tech) is going through this phase at their companies. It’s not working. Checking the output seems like a simple request, but the question becomes: Check against what? If the police are making a document that sources from another report that another officer used AI to produce from their notes whic…

> We’re all also discovering that many people’s idea of reviewing the output is to skim it and verify that it looks convincing enough.

I mean over time I've come to believe that most people are just _bad at reading_ - if you ask these people to compare two documents they'll say that they are the same if the wording or surface "feel" is at all similar, even if in the precision of the statement they say the opposite.

See also: People being generally bad at listening and hearing what they want to instead of anything quantitatively derivable from what the other person said.

None of this is written as an excuse for AI.

Re: Police in England and Wales told to halt AI use in court statements

#38

Post by _puk »

Aurornis wrote: post #12
embedding-shape wrote: post #3

> [...] he had intervened at forces that were deploying commercially available AI tools before they had been properly assessed [...] “All forces have got a good policy on the use of Copilot,” Murray said. “All forces will have a policy that says, ‘Check everything that it produces’.” Not only are they using AI before they've properly assessed them, they also end up using Copilot which must be one of the worse AIs cur…

> “All forces will have a policy that says, ‘Check everything that it produces’.” Everyone I talk to (including outside of tech) is going through this phase at their companies. It’s not working. Checking the output seems like a simple request, but the question becomes: Check against what? If the police are making a document that sources from another report that another officer used AI to produce from their notes whic…

Here's a massive document, without any real context as to what thinking went into the points it's making, tell me if it looks ok. Oh, and there's 10 more where that came from.

We're outsourcing the thinking to the recipient.

Yes, it's way easier to create the report now, but it's not being honed down to the crux of the points it needs to make. And the reviewers are expected to what? Up their ability to mentally consume and reason about reports.

I mean, barrier number 1: did you read it yourself before asking someone else seems too high for some..

Re: Police in England and Wales told to halt AI use in court statements

#39

Post by _puk »

_puk wrote: post #38
Aurornis wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “All forces will have a policy that says, ‘Check everything that it produces’.” Everyone I talk to (including outside of tech) is going through this phase at their companies. It’s not working. Checking the output seems like a simple request, but the question becomes: Check against what? If the police are making a document that sources from another report that another officer used AI to produce from their notes whic…

Here's a massive document, without any real context as to what thinking went into the points it's making, tell me if it looks ok. Oh, and there's 10 more where that came from. We're outsourcing the thinking to the recipient. Yes, it's way easier to create the report now, but it's not being honed down to the crux of the points it needs to make. And the reviewers are expected to what? Up their ability to mentally consu…

Never before has the adage "if I took* more time I would have written less" been true.

*Yes, I know

Re: Police in England and Wales told to halt AI use in court statements

#40

Post by _gmax0 »

layer8 wrote: post #7
phyalow wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was granted a free subscription to the FT when I was at grad school 9 years ago, surprisingly it still continues to work to this day…

How much did you pay for grad school? ;)

If not for taxpayers, the opportunity cost would be incalculably immense.
Post reply on HN