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

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

#171

Post by alisonkisk »

giantg2 wrote: post #44
stefan_ wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the point? These systems invariably turn out to not be any sort of AI at all, but sales people ready to make a call any way their customer (police) wants it made. Later it's presented as AI to a jury. It's basically the same scam as lots of forensics, junk science to get a desired result.

I generally agree, but wouldn't necessarily say a lot of forensics is junk science. 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. Or lab techs make mistakes or perform misconduct (How to Fix a Drug Scandal on Netflix is interesting).

Citation strongly needed on forensics bring generally sound.

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

#172

Post by P_I_Staker »

sharken wrote: post #110
aeturnum wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just fyi - Police are generally quite well paid for the area they live in. For example, in Alameda (the county I live in) it's common for police to make over $450,000 a year[1]. Also, while police to have a more-dangerous-than-average job[2] (and face unique risks - they are probably the most likely profession to die of a gunshot on the job), there are much more dangerous jobs[3]. So if you have been excusing police…

With $450,000 as yearly pay i should give up being a software developer. Alameda even has a violent crime rate of half the US average. https://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-Alameda-California.htm... I do wonder if the pay negatively affects the confrontations that the individual officer will risk, e.g. let a suspect escape due to not having good enough backup.

That's because he's probably lying/exaggerating. I highly doubt your average officer makes anywhere near that. I don't make over 200k as an experienced developer, either.

People are terrible with nuance. OP did a good job at contextualizing danger of policing, without claiming it's "safe", as you'd see on reddit, but I'm guessing something is getting lost here.

I'm very sceptical someone is in the multiple sixes of figures without serious responsibility and credentials. In my area officers make similar (lower) pay than tech jobs, and every area I've seen is similar. So people on reddit will be complaining about officers making 80k-100k out west, when in reality that's just marginally better than bartenders.

So yeah, they're making like 60k-100k, or more out west. Here in the midwest it's more like 40k-80k. This compares to developer jobs I've seen, but it's not apples to apples. Cops end up years behind in pay, but end up with better benefits. So they'll be at 70k 3-10 years in, instead of 0-5 in.

In either case there's other tiers and roles, was assuming grunts. There might be other cases where "super grunt" jobs exist, and get paid very well. Just like with engineers it seems like the way to advance is increased specialization and moving to management.

You can spin your wheels at low level engineering jobs for decades if you want, too. Usually, people also have to move towards leadership roles to advance in engineering...

So I digress, but I guess it's fair to say police officer is of similar value as engineer in terms of job perks... but engineer is considered a good job.

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

#173

Post by oh_sigh »

jes wrote: post #18
tyingq wrote: post #8

It's interesting to me that there's no working process to introduce/accept new types of science in court. Polygraphs aren't allowed (though the police still find ways to use it to bully people). So, there's some process. But you still see stories about subsets of fiber, hair, arson, fingerprint, dna, etc, science, that shouldn't have been brought to court.

The legal system will, over time, also have to accept and adapt to the idea that free will is an illusion. (See “neuro-law” for more information on this.)

Why would it? Aren't judges and legislators equally lacking in free will too?

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

#174

Post by R0b0t1 »

leephillips wrote: post #131
R0b0t1 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Huh, thanks for pointing that out. I had no idea that waiving the right to a speedy trial was even a thing. If you do not so waive, what is the standard for a trial date that is considered constitutionally speedy at the moment?

It depends on state. In Kansas, it is 180 days if out on bail, or 90 if held. Note this does not include time before you are arraigned. In some states it does (personally, speedy trial should include the time before you are arraigned, so that the state is forced to hurry up and deal with cases or dismiss them).

I'm unsure about federal guidelines. I think many states have laws that could be challenged in federal court, and their de facto behavior most certainly can, if you have money.

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

#175

Post by chacham15 »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #3

The article says that employees of the AI company (ShotSpotter) manually reviewed and classified the sounds as gunshots: > records showed that ShotSpotter actually initially picked up what sounded like a firework a mile away, and this was later reclassified by ShotSpotter staff to be a gunshot at the intersection where and when Williams was seen on camera. So the AI didn’t even make the call. The staff did, manually.…

This is missing a key crucial insight: the overall number of evaluated cases increases when AI is helping meaning that borderline cases which may have been ignored prior are now being evaluated. Said another way, with AI handling the obvious cases, the number of borderline cases being evaluated by humans increases. With humans having large amounts of inaccuracy, borderline cases before which may have been ignored due to not having manpower to evaluate are now being evaluated. This can and does lead to many more erroneous accusations despite the fact that all the borderline evaluations are being handled by humans.

Another factor here is that simply evaluating more data is also likely to lead to more erroneous evaluations since random chance has a much larger impact.

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

#176

Post by robocat »

stefan_ wrote: post #6
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #3

The article says that employees of the AI company (ShotSpotter) manually reviewed and classified the sounds as gunshots: > records showed that ShotSpotter actually initially picked up what sounded like a firework a mile away, and this was later reclassified by ShotSpotter staff to be a gunshot at the intersection where and when Williams was seen on camera. So the AI didn’t even make the call. The staff did, manually.…

That's the point? These systems invariably turn out to not be any sort of AI at all, but sales people ready to make a call any way their customer (police) wants it made. Later it's presented as AI to a jury. It's basically the same scam as lots of forensics, junk science to get a desired result.

Police are telling ShotSpotter to alter evidence from gunshot-detecting AI

https://www.vice.com/en/article/qj8xbq/police-are-telling-sh...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27959755

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

#177

Post by shadilay »

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #137
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?

A lot of times, people have to waive their right to a speedy trial. Apparently, in some districts they don't like it when the accused doesn't waive their right, so much that the defense attorney will get assaulted by the judge. https://youtu.be/jAv1QUkHFSY?t=397

'Florida Judge'

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

#178

Post by aeturnum »

jdjd6 wrote: post #153
aeturnum wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good critique! Looking at historical data it seems like "commonly above $300,000" would be more accurate. It's worth saying that listed police salaries are far below these numbers and the officers get there through overtime and other extra payments. Thus the use of 'common' instead of average because you have to look back at what people were actually paid. Edit: I can no longer edit my original post so this…

How are supervisors and elected officials making 300k (after all benefits considered) in an area with a high cost of living equal to "police commonly make above 300k"? Second, it would be absurd to account for extra income to say they make what you're saying. That's like saying a cashier at walmart works three jobs to make an average of 70k a year, so cashiers at walmart commonly make 70k a year.

> it would be absurd to account for extra income to say they make what you're saying.

It's not what I say they make, it's what the public records say they make. You can go look yourself.

For example, from my first link, Sergeant Stuart Eugene Barnes made $125,380.76 in salary and $172,330.17 in overtime. I think it fair to say that's compensation from their job as a police officer.

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

#179

Post by dylan604 »

bryan0 wrote: post #122
DubiousPusher wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>I’m sure there are better sources on this case though.

Yet another example of why you cannot get your information from one source. Even if they are not trying to mislead, the one author might not have all of the information to provide in thier writings.

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

#180

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

c_weighted wrote: post #169
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #112

I get that their system may sometimes need manual classification of signals but how is it possible to change the triangulated location? That is the core part of the technology and doesn't require ML to implement. Seems like it's all just Theranos style vapor.

Locating on an echo at one more receivers rather than a perhaps quieter more direct path. Putting the wrong impulses together when computing a location. Computing the wrong start time for one or more impulses. If you want to read up on all the ways this kind of thing can go wrong, the technical term here is "source localization."

The military has no problem detecting gunfire direction and estimating range from a single microphone array on a mast. Shotspotter is a distributed network of multiple sensors across a wide area. If they can't make it work after 15+ years then they are hopeless.
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