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Armed police swarm student after AI mistakes bag of Doritos for a weapon

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Re: Armed police swarm student after AI mistakes bag of Doritos for a weapon

#431

Post by courseofaction »

seanhunter wrote: post #35
mentalgear wrote: post #18

Ah, the coming age of Palantir's all seeing platform; and Peter Thiel becoming the shadow Emperor. Too bad non-deterministic ml systems are prone to errors that risk lives when applied wrongly to crucial parts of society. But in an authoritarian state, those will be hidden away anyway, so there's nothing to see here: move along folks. Yes, surveillance and authoritarianism go hand in hand, ask China. It's important t…

The article is about omnialert, not palantir, but don’t let the facts get in the way of your soapbox rant.

American, please, wake up. The masked border police are on the streets arresting citizens, the military is being paid as a client of the president, corruption is legal, and a mass surveillance machine unfathomable to prior dictatorships is being/has been established. You're fucked. Listen to the soapbox. It is very, very relevant. Wake up.

Re: Armed police swarm student after AI mistakes bag of Doritos for a weapon

#432

Post by rolph »

wat10000 wrote: post #408
rkagerer wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be, depending on the integrity of "the system". I can make a system that flags stuff, too. That doesn't mean it's any good. If they can show there was no reasonable cause then they've got a leg to stand on.

It’s the literal truth. How can that be a false report? A false report means you reported something you know to be untrue, not that you relayed bad information.

relay bad information, that suggests negligence, rather than willful omission or deception

Re: Armed police swarm student after AI mistakes bag of Doritos for a weapon

#433

Post by wat10000 »

rolph wrote: post #432
wat10000 wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s the literal truth. How can that be a false report? A false report means you reported something you know to be untrue, not that you relayed bad information.

relay bad information, that suggests negligence, rather than willful omission or deception

It would only be negligence if the police were considered like some sort of dangerous wild animal that people need to avoid provoking, and can't be held responsible on its own.

Which may very well be accurate, but I can't imagine the law ever punishing someone on that basis.

Re: Armed police swarm student after AI mistakes bag of Doritos for a weapon

#434

Post by janalsncm »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #387
janalsncm wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. But school shootings are also common in the US. A student who has brought a gun to a school is very likely not harmless. So false negatives aren’t free either.

What's the proportion of gun-carrying to shooting in schools?

Well guns aren’t allowed in schools at all. It’s a felony. So if your point is that the ratio is low, that’s only because the denominator is way too big.

Re: Armed police swarm student after AI mistakes bag of Doritos for a weapon

#436

Post by lawiejtrlj »

nomel wrote: post #225
xbar wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Charge the superintendent with swatting. Decision-maker accountability is the only thing that halts bad decision-making.

> Charge the superintendent with swatting. This assumes no human verification of the flagged video. Maybe the bag DID look like a gun. We'll never know, because modern journalism has no interest in such things. They obtained the required emotional quotes and moved on.

Yes, clearly the journalist was the cause of the problem here. You're an idiot.

Re: Armed police swarm student after AI mistakes bag of Doritos for a weapon

#437

Post by immibis »

zugi wrote: post #295
avidiax wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://archive.is/DYPBL > Gaggle’s CEO, Jeff Patterson, said in an interview that the school system did not use Gaggle the way it is intended. The purpose is to find early warning signs and intervene before problems escalate to law enforcement, he said. “I wish that was treated as a teachable moment, not a law enforcement moment,” said Patterson. It's entirely predictable that schools will call law enforcement for m…

Exactly. In a saner world, we could use fallible AI to call attention to possible concerns that a human could then analyze and make an appropriate judgment call on. But alas, we don't live in that world. We live in a world where there will be firings, civil, and even criminal liability for those who make wrong judgments. If the AI says "possible gun", the human running things who alerts a SWAT team faces all upside a…

https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/accountability-sinks

Re: Armed police swarm student after AI mistakes bag of Doritos for a weapon

#439

Post by danaris »

avidiax wrote: post #229
omnipresent12 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www2.ljworld.com/news/schools/2025/aug/07/lawrence-s... Another false positive by one of these leading content filters schools use - the kid said something stupid in a group chat and an AI reported it to the school, and the school contacted the police. The kid was arrested, stripped searched, and held for 24 hours without access to their parents or counsel. They ultimately had to spend time in probation, a fu…

https://archive.is/DYPBL > Gaggle’s CEO, Jeff Patterson, said in an interview that the school system did not use Gaggle the way it is intended. The purpose is to find early warning signs and intervene before problems escalate to law enforcement, he said. “I wish that was treated as a teachable moment, not a law enforcement moment,” said Patterson. It's entirely predictable that schools will call law enforcement for m…

I do not, in any way, disagree with holding Gaggle accountable for this.

But can we at least talk about also holding the school accountable for the absolutely insane response?

You talk about not selling to schools that have "zero tolerance" policies as if those are an immutable fact of nature that can never be changed, but they are a human thing that has very obvious negative effects. There is no reason we actually have to have "zero tolerance" policies that traumatize children who genuinely did nothing wrong.

"Zero tolerance" for bringing deadly weapons to school, I can understand. So long as what's being checked for is actual deadly weapons, and not just "anything vaguely gun-shaped", or "anything that one could in theory use as a deadly weapon" (I mean, that would include things like "pens" and "textbooks", so...).

"Zero tolerance" for particular kinds of language is much less acceptable. And I say this as someone who is fully in favor of eliminating things like hate speech or threats of violence—you don't do it by coming down like the wrath of God on children for a single instance of such speech, whether it was actually hate speech or not. They are in school; that's the perfect place to be teaching them a) why such speech is not OK, b) who it hurts, and c) how to express themselves without it, rather than just treating them like terrorists.

Re: Armed police swarm student after AI mistakes bag of Doritos for a weapon

#440

Post by akoboldfrying »

Mawr wrote: post #282
akoboldfrying wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is HN really this ready to dive into obvious logical fallacies? My original comment, currently sitting at -4, has so far attracted one guilt-by-association plus implied-threat combo, and no other replies. To remind readers: My horrifying proposal was to measure both the risks and the benefits of things . If anyone genuinely thinks measuring the risks and benefits of things is a bad idea, or that it is in general a go…

> Is HN really this ready to dive into obvious logical fallacies? No, which is why your comment was downvoted - the following is a fallacy: > This argument can be made about almost every technology, That's the continuum fallacy.

No, it isn't the continuum fallacy.

I'm not claiming that a continuous range exists, and that one end cannot be distinguished from the other because the slope between those points is gradual. I'm claiming that there is a category, called technology, and everything in that category is subject to that argument.

If you want to dispute that, it's incumbent on you to provide evidence for why some technology subcategories should not be subject to that argument.

Specifically: You need to present a case for why AI devices like the one discussed in TFA should not be evaluated in terms of their risks and benefits to society.

Good luck with that argument.

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