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

theregister.com

21–30 of 211 posts

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

#21
Not really relevant to this article, but relevant to the title: if AI keeps banning accounts for reasons that seems nonsense to humans, how will we protect people from getting flagged and locked up 'just in case' by the machine?

AI is just not advanced enough to jail people, by a very large margin. And yet we will see it happen.

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

#22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, drug dogs are still a thing even though we know they tend to respond to owners desires regardless of if there’s drugs present.

Wow i have never heard of that. Curious to see a link/article on the issue, if you can provide.

This is a decent summary of court cases related to the dogs: https://www.nlrg.com/criminal-law-legal-research/bid/84670/C...

I think this part is pretty key, and has always been a big open question in my mind:

"The court further recognized a potential problem in assessing reliability related to handler cuing, as even well-trained dogs could respond to subconscious cues from their handlers. For this reason, the court determined that a critical factor in determining reliability is the record of false positive alerts made by the dog."

The subconscious cues, or even deliberate cues that only the handler and dog know, could allow an officer with ill intentions to make some kind of signal only known to him and the dog, which causes the dog to make an "alert", giving the cop probable cause.

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

#23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, drug dogs are still a thing even though we know they tend to respond to owners desires regardless of if there’s drugs present.

Wow i have never heard of that. Curious to see a link/article on the issue, if you can provide.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3078300/

Backs up the GP claim but I can’t find any evidence of this being replicated in another independent experiment. It’s at least a little bit strange that no one tried to replicate these rather concerning findings in the past 10 years since publication.

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

#24
Wow there are microphones used to detect gunshots in Chicago? I remember seeing such technology in a relatively obscure cyberpunk comic book when I was a kid, but I never thought this would be legal.

Do the microphones record conversations too? Can the government spy on its own citizens? I guess some secret court ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intell... ) allowed it?

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

#25
post #10

Well that's still a failure on both the software programmed by humans causing a false positive and then doubled down by a wrong human review, based on a false alert. All involved stakeholders have failed.

How is this a failure by software? The software categorized the sound as a fire work.

> How is this a failure by software?

The outcome - a guy being charged with a crime using bogus evidence is the story. The software may have been right, but the people who operate the software didn't trust it. Regardless, the story is trying to point out we might not be ready to put our faith in AI for criminal prosecutions at this time.

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

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, drug dogs are still a thing even though we know they tend to respond to owners desires regardless of if there’s drugs present.

Wow i have never heard of that. Curious to see a link/article on the issue, if you can provide.

An internet search for drug dog false alert returns numerous results.

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

#27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, drug dogs are still a thing even though we know they tend to respond to owners desires regardless of if there’s drugs present.

Wow i have never heard of that. Curious to see a link/article on the issue, if you can provide.

[deleted]

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

#28
post #9

Coming next year: "A man spent a year in jail on child pornography charge that hinged on disputed Apple CSAM evidence".

I know you're being coy to slam on Apple, but this already happens in the uS __without__ Apple's (imo misguided) strategy and it happens frequently.

Prosecution over thumbnails, file hash matches with tenuous connections to individuals, Crime-Tech has given a new position for law enforcement to craft fanciful narratives to support prosecutions of just about anyone. I'm not specifically citing or inferring there have been *targeted* instances of this, but it happens very often towards US citizens already.

Stingrays, Cellebrite, Forensic "science", ShotSpotter, it's absolute chaos and anyone can be a victim here.

My goal here is not anything about Apple and its CSAM strategy, but to make it very clear that the imagined scenario happens now and happens frequently.

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

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, drug dogs are still a thing even though we know they tend to respond to owners desires regardless of if there’s drugs present.

Wow i have never heard of that. Curious to see a link/article on the issue, if you can provide.

If you like that you'll love the Wikipedia entry for polygraphs :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygraph#Effectiveness

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

#30
post #16
post #12

“It's said that in May last year, Williams was driving through Chicago one night hoping to buy some cigarettes.” Ah yes, I remember hearing that a lot growing up. Editors, do your job!

What do you mean?

I think OP meant that "driving through Chicago" was pretty large/vague area for someone just trying to buy cigarettes.

It's like saying I was driving through the United States to go to my local corner store.

I wouldn't have thought about the poor writing if OP didn't mention it, but it is still a bit pedantic in my opinion.

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