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

Innocent woman jailed after being misidentified using AI facial recognition

grandforksherald.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 417 posts

Re: Innocent woman jailed after being misidentified using AI facial recognition

#231

Post by fc417fc802 »

caconym_ wrote: post #118
throwaway314155 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s nothing wrong with your comment per se, but it’s almost as if you didn’t even read the comment you’re responding to.

Let me help you out with this comprehension issue. The point of my comment is that I disagree with the apparent premise of the comment I replied to, which is that "AI" is some generic investigative tool that we can neatly snip out of the picture to blame this incident on human factors at the individual level ("the professional human-in-the-loop who shirked all responsibility"). Said comment also implies that people a…

> Let me state what should be obvious: without AI (as in, the facial recognition systems involved in this case), this woman would not have sat in jail for 5 months, or indeed for any length of time at all.

How do you arrive at that conclusion? Because it happened, and it wasn't an AI overseeing (the lack of) due process. The police identifying suspects is part of their job. So are arrest warrants and all the rest of it. I honestly don't see what AI had to do with anything here. All I see is a gaping systemic issue that could have happened regardless of AI if the wrong person got the wrong idea or had a personal vendetta.

Suppose ICE busts down someone's door, drags them off, holds them in an internment camp for months, and then finally goes "oh, oops, guess you were a citizen all along sorry about that" and releases them. We don't blame the source of their faulty hit list. We blame the systemic practices and legal apparatus that permitted it all to happen in the first place.

You might as well blame the SUV manufacturer because without vehicles the police wouldn't hav been able to drive over to make the arrest, right?

Re: Innocent woman jailed after being misidentified using AI facial recognition

#232

Post by fc417fc802 »

Retric wrote: post #117
throwaway314155 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s nothing wrong with your comment per se, but it’s almost as if you didn’t even read the comment you’re responding to.

Seems like a direct response to me. >> How is this the fault of AI? > This particular "AI bogeyman" isn't just AI; it's cops with AI You can’t separate the thing from how it will be used. It’s like arguing that cars on their own aren’t particularly dangerous, but the point of buying a car is to use it thus risking the general public.

But you can in fact argue exactly that. If (arbitrary example) pedestrians are being killed due to poor road engineering practices it isn't reasonable to point at cars and say "see those are the root problem" when in fact it's due to a willful lack of sidewalks or marked crossings or whatever. Being adjacent to something bad doesn't equate to being the root cause.

Re: Innocent woman jailed after being misidentified using AI facial recognition

#234

Post by chocoboaus3 »

mothballed wrote: post #121
hinkley wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s also cops Making the Numbers Go Up by marking down a case file as having progressed because someone is in custody. Which isn’t about justice.

They don't seem to give a single iota of a fuck about that when a private regular person has their money stolen or their car totaled by hit and run driver. Finding some innocent person to arrest would indicate they are at least pretending to give a fuck, yet they seem to only be bothered to even keep up appearances when it is the bank being robbed.

mate Capitalism 101

Re: Innocent woman jailed after being misidentified using AI facial recognition

#235

Post by chocoboaus3 »

unethical_ban wrote: post #195
whack wrote: post #51

> According to the court documents, the Fargo detective working the case then looked at Lipps' social media accounts and Tennessee driver's license photo. In his charging document, the detective wrote that Lipps appeared to be the suspect based on facial features, body type and hairstyle and color. > Once they were in hand, Fargo police met with him and Lipps at the Cass County jail on Dec. 19. She had already been i…

Someone from the government should be in jail for this kind of oversight.

its the only way this stops happening.

Re: Innocent woman jailed after being misidentified using AI facial recognition

#236

Post by ux266478 »

pj_mukh wrote: post #119
rglover wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How is this the fault of AI? It flagged a possible match. A live human detective confirmed it. Because we're seeing the first instances of what reality looks like with AI in the hands of the average bear. Just like the excuse was "but the computer said it was correct," now we're just shifting to "but the AI said it was correct." Don't underestimate how much authority and thinking people will delegate to machines. N…

I'm sorry but this is a piss-poor excuse. When I Claude code broken features, I'm responsible 100%. Why are cops not treated the same way? OP is right, AI is totally irrelevant in this story. If the point is "cops can't be trusted". Why do they have GUNS?! AI is the least of your problems. I feel like I'm going crazy with this narrative.

You can hold someone responsible only after they've actually fucked up. And with the way things move in the criminal justice system, that can take months to discover. Holding them responsible doesn't really fix anything, it's purely reactive.

Re: Innocent woman jailed after being misidentified using AI facial recognition

#237

Post by TheScaryOne »

heavyset_go wrote: post #181
pj_mukh wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry but this is a piss-poor excuse. When I Claude code broken features, I'm responsible 100%. Why are cops not treated the same way? OP is right, AI is totally irrelevant in this story. If the point is "cops can't be trusted". Why do they have GUNS?! AI is the least of your problems. I feel like I'm going crazy with this narrative.

When you foster a culture of impunity and passing the buck, don't be surprised when they pass the buck to the inscrutable black box they bought. You might even argue that's the purpose of the inscrutable black box.

AI is the new "it's policy."

Re: Innocent woman jailed after being misidentified using AI facial recognition

#238

Post by Nimitz14 »

stego-tech wrote: post #126
pj_mukh wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry but this is a piss-poor excuse. When I Claude code broken features, I'm responsible 100%. Why are cops not treated the same way? OP is right, AI is totally irrelevant in this story. If the point is "cops can't be trusted". Why do they have GUNS?! AI is the least of your problems. I feel like I'm going crazy with this narrative.

You’re going crazy because up until this exact moment you’ve never had to confront the reality that these tools, placed into the hands of the common man, are viewed as authoritative and lack any accountability or consequence for misuse. For anyone who has been victimized by law enforcement or governments before, we’ve been warning about this shit for decades . About the lack of consequence for police brutality. The l…

Your answer presumes we cannot hold people accountable. I think that is incorrect.

Re: Innocent woman jailed after being misidentified using AI facial recognition

#239

Post by fc417fc802 »

obviouslynotme wrote: post #98
whack wrote: post #51

> According to the court documents, the Fargo detective working the case then looked at Lipps' social media accounts and Tennessee driver's license photo. In his charging document, the detective wrote that Lipps appeared to be the suspect based on facial features, body type and hairstyle and color. > Once they were in hand, Fargo police met with him and Lipps at the Cass County jail on Dec. 19. She had already been i…

It's not. This is just an acceleration in the unraveling of society facilitated by AI. As someone whose childhood included so many "robots will kill humans" books and movies, I am flabbergasted that the AI apocalypse will be dumb humans overtrusting faulty AI in important matters until everything falls apart. Most humans cannot distinguish AI from actual intelligence. When you combine that with bureaucrats innate ten…

> If a person had made this facial match, another human would have relentlessly jeered him.

The glaringly obvious problem here is that our justice system should not be constructed in such a way so as to be reliant on someone's coworker shaming him. That is not a sensible check against a systemic failure. We're supposed to have due process. If someone skips or otherwise subverts due process the justifications don't matter. The root issue is that due process was skipped. Why was that even possible to begin with?

Re: Innocent woman jailed after being misidentified using AI facial recognition

#240

Post by kelnos »

ryandrake wrote: post #50
jauer wrote: post #5

AI or not, it's unconscionable that victims of compulsory legal processes by way of mistaken identity are not made whole.

People will defend this, too, saying “well, she was eventually exonerated, right? So the system works!” Ignoring how she’ll never be fully reimbursed for the time, money, and grief of going through the system.

Not to mention:

> Unable to pay her bills from jail, she lost her home, her car and even her dog.

If this is the system "working", then the system is broken.

Post reply on HN