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AI Mistakes Bus-Side Ad for Famous CEO, Charges Her With Jaywalking

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Re: AI Mistakes Bus-Side Ad for Famous CEO, Charges Her With Jaywalking

#171
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how it works in Sweden and I believe we have even fewer road casualties than the US.

Interesting! I didn't know that. Also curious as with the other poster: What happens when a driver hits a pedestrian? Do they do an investigation into whether the driver could've stopped in time/was traveling the speed limit/etc?

>Also curious as with the other poster: What happens when a driver hits a pedestrian? Do they do an investigation into whether the driver could've stopped in time/was traveling the speed limit/etc?

Yes. And the driver has the burden of proof. They drive in a city, so they should have appropriate distance from anything in front of them, and go slow enough to stop. What if it was a kid running into the street?

Here's the lowdown from a UK solicitor:

https://www.digbybrown.co.uk/solicitors/news-main/what-happe...

Re: AI Mistakes Bus-Side Ad for Famous CEO, Charges Her With Jaywalking

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> UK has never had jaywalking laws. Most countries don't... A pedestrian crosses when they feel it is safe to do so, and anywhere along the road they choose. Having started to cross they have priority over traffic. That's really interesting! I wasn't aware of that. What happens when a driver hits a pedestrian? Is there an investigation into whether the driver could've stopped in time?

> What happens when a driver hits a pedestrian? Is there an investigation into whether the driver could've stopped in time? The driver would be more guilty as they should have been going with a suitable speed and pay attention to the road when driving inside the city.

Living in a major city myself, I can think of several intersections where one could be traveling the speed limit and paying attention but be completely unable to stop in time for a pedestrian crossing unexpectedly.

There are numerous streets and corners that are really poorly lit because of scaffolding/debris/etc.

Re: AI Mistakes Bus-Side Ad for Famous CEO, Charges Her With Jaywalking

#173
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NOTE: not specifically about jaywalking, but about fines/fees being disproportionate punishment in general Jail disproportionately punishes those who are working. (they lose their income source, then they can't pay bills, then their house gets foreclosed, etc.) Ditching punishment entirely means free-for-all anarchy until somebody takes that opportunity to impose a government with punishments. What options are left?…

This manner of thinking is why we have issues such as black people being disproportionately affected by Marijuana laws or large fines/punishments for relatively benign things such as jaywalking. The way we doll out punishment in America ends up being a slap on the wrist for the rich and wealthy and devasting for the poor and minorities.

Well, like Anacharsis told to Solon (the lawmaker) in 6 BC Athens:

"[Your] laws are no different from spiders' webs. They'll restrain anyone weak and insignificant who gets caught in them, but they'll be torn to shreds by people with power and wealth".

Re: AI Mistakes Bus-Side Ad for Famous CEO, Charges Her With Jaywalking

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the case of jaywalking, the answer is simple. You just make it legal. Cars can slow down. Mmmm I dunno about that. Drivers have minimum reaction times and cars have stopping distances. Giving pedestrians the right-of-way in every situation seems like a recipe for a lot of collisions. It could work, but I think it would involve re-designing countless intersections to provide higher visibility of pedestrians for d…

>>In the case of jaywalking, the answer is simple. You just make it legal. Cars can slow down. > Mmmm I dunno about that. Drivers have minimum reaction times and cars have stopping distances Actually in many countries like the Netherlands and the UK, inside the city pedestrians have priority (right of way) over traffic everywhere. If a pedestrian crosses you stop, no jaywalking BS.

Wait, is it just inside the major cities? Not everywhere?

Re: AI Mistakes Bus-Side Ad for Famous CEO, Charges Her With Jaywalking

#175
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I am lucky. I can pay that. It sucks but some people would be out food money if they suddenly had to pay $500 to drive again. Absolutely, court fees and fines disproportionately punish those with low incomes. Increasing enforcement of low level violations by surveillance tech and/or AI is going to crush a lot of people if we don't change that fact. https://www.npr.org/2014/05/19/312158516/increasing-court-fe... http…

Finland, I believe, scales fines proportionally to your income. Not perfect (the rich can more easily hide their income than the not so rich), but a good start.

I think if it scales to a maximum amount its fine especially for driving related violations. For example nobody needs to be paying 25 grand for a speeding violation thats absurd regardless of income. But its interesting. I believe in Mexico its based on your hourly wage and x amount of hours. So if you have no job and you get a ticket you owe nothing, at least thats how it was when my sister got a ticket in Guadalajara in '07.

Re: AI Mistakes Bus-Side Ad for Famous CEO, Charges Her With Jaywalking

#176
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fines should be some percentage of income. Here in Finland the record speeding ticked is over 100,000 euros. One guy in Switzerland received $1 million speeding ticket for driving his Mercedes SLS AMG over 280 km/h. That's how hit should be.

Scaling fines up to higher incomes for things that don't really matter (jaywalking, minor traffic violations) seems antithetical to the individualistic core of American culture. We typically try to equalize society by raising the floor for the many, rather than lowering the ceiling for the few.

>We typically try to equalize society by raising the floor for the many, rather than lowering the ceiling for the few.

When it comes to crimes like that, you want to absolutely lower the ceiling for the few as well, and scaling fines is the way to do it.

Re: AI Mistakes Bus-Side Ad for Famous CEO, Charges Her With Jaywalking

#177
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't pass the smell test. If you have a receipt from the court showing that the fine was settled, how can they be saying they never got the money? As an aside this is a good reminder to keep forever any receipts for settlements with courts, the IRS, or other regulators.

>If you have a receipt from the court showing that the fine was settled, how can they be saying they never got the money? I assume the payment did not triggered the right things to mark the fine as payed, or someone made a mistake a number somewhere and something failed. You should always keep your receipt for a while or forever (keep energy/phone bills for a few months)

I received a notice about not paying a ticket, 6+ years after I had paid for it. Lucky for me, I still had the paper receipt and so I went into the SF courthouse to show proof of payment. After reviewing it, the clerk told me that it looked like their IT modernization had erroneously marked my case as being unpaid. I can't imagine how very painful the resolution process would have been if I had not kept that receipt.

Re: AI Mistakes Bus-Side Ad for Famous CEO, Charges Her With Jaywalking

#178
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A machine can be tested for bias and measures taken against such bias are certainly followed. The same does not hold for humans. Detecting the bias (down to the person level) is very hard. Going on to remedy it is even harder. You can't (or at least shouldn't) reprogram people. In other words, you can change a racist machine, but not a racist cop.

> A machine can be tested for bias and measures taken against such bias are certainly followed. To what degree? Based on first-order data, some populations really do commit more crime. However, we know that background/poverty is the real, underlying cause. And even if we fed enough data to an algorithm to avoid that bias, avoiding the bias isn't enough. What you really want to do is tackle the cause. If the AI is a b…

> To what degree

What I would do is, first list the characteristics that must not be used to make arrest decisions. Then, train an AI to recognise those characteristics. Afterwards, when training the crime predictor AI or whatever, use the first AI to scrub unwanted characteristics from the training data input. If it all works out right, the biases in the AI's decisions will reflect statistical differences between ethnicities, but won't be driven by them. And if it works out really well, you could use it in reverse a-la style transfer: what should the people of group X do differently to not be arrested so much.

Re: AI Mistakes Bus-Side Ad for Famous CEO, Charges Her With Jaywalking

#179
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the case of jaywalking, the answer is simple. You just make it legal. Cars can slow down. Mmmm I dunno about that. Drivers have minimum reaction times and cars have stopping distances. Giving pedestrians the right-of-way in every situation seems like a recipe for a lot of collisions. It could work, but I think it would involve re-designing countless intersections to provide higher visibility of pedestrians for d…

Drivers have no problem avoiding other cars, which move much more quickly, are much less manoeuvreable, and have longer stopping distances. Strikes me that avoiding people on foot ought to be pretty simple.

That's true of other cars, too. They're big, change direction slowly, and are covered in bright lights. Pedestrians are small, can (and do) change direction quickly, and often wear dark colors, even at night.

Cars are also much more predictable. They have lines that show where they're going, (usually) signal before changing direction, and (IME) are much more likely to obey red lights. I rarely see cars simply ignore a red light, but I see pedestrians do it all the time.

Re: AI Mistakes Bus-Side Ad for Famous CEO, Charges Her With Jaywalking

#180
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how it works in Sweden and I believe we have even fewer road casualties than the US.

Interesting! I didn't know that. Also curious as with the other poster: What happens when a driver hits a pedestrian? Do they do an investigation into whether the driver could've stopped in time/was traveling the speed limit/etc?

To my knowledge, jaywalking is legal in Boston, where I live. The pedestrian is presumed to have the right-of-way.
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