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

theregister.com

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

#71

Post by siliconc0w »

Wow - any software system that is used to submit evidence to the court should have a preferably cryptographically secure chain of custody of all artifacts - including the raw recorded audio and the code used to process it. Any manual 'post processing' should be tracked down to a person, a date, and a verifiable reason for making changes to the model/decision. For 'black box' models an independent organization should be able to test them to confirm stated accuracy/precision.

I don't think the answer is to do away with these systems but as we yield more and more authority to machines regulation will need to catch up so they aren't just used a fig leaf for corroboratory-evidence-as-a-service.

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

#72

Post by matt123456789 »

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.)

Unless you are aware of any breakthroughs in fundamental physics or neurology which are being kept from the rest of us, “free will is an illusion” is not a very useful theory when it comes to public policy.

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

#73

Post by hanniabu »

CraigJPerry wrote: post #23
yawaworht1978 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They probably refused new experiments because of this. It's better to have one test with this result that you can refute as a one off result that hasn't been replicated than dealing with multiple tests with the same result.

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

#74

Post by dylan604 »

giantg2 wrote: post #47
leephillips wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some departments deploy dogs that alert on all vehicles when they want an excuse to search. In at least one department, this was referred to as “probable cause on four legs”. If judges continue to allow this quality of evidence, the police will continue to abuse the legal environment that creates.

Let's face it - most judges are, at least subconsciously, on the same side as the police and prosecutors even though that's not how the system should work.

>though that's now how the system should work.

I'm assuming that's an unfortunate Freudian slip of a typo.

not how the system should work, even though it is now how it seems to work.

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

#75

Post by aaaaaaaaaaab »

jwilk wrote: post #16
JackFr wrote: 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?

Weasel words: “it’s said”

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

#76

Post by bryan0 »

> Soon after another vehicle pulled up alongside, and someone in a passenger seat took out a gun and shot Herring in the head, Williams told police.

I dont understand what Shotspotter has to do with this case at all. The question the case seems to hinge on is “who fired the gun”, not “was a gun fired at this location”.

What am I missing?

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

#77

Post by arp242 »

monetus wrote: post #50
giantg2 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't call polygraphs forensics. Most states do not allow them as evidence. Do you have a link for the fingerprinting claim?

(Not who you responded to) https://www.crammlawfirm.com/fingerprint-match-jails-innocen... This isn't the case I originally recalled, and doesn't say how many points were matched, but I remember a 5 point match being used to convict a person who was later proven innocent.

Fingerprints aren't "junk science", but they do have error margins and plenty of room for mistakes. The problem is that many juries, judges, prosecutors, and even defenders forget about this.

This is the case for many types of evidence; witness statements for example can also be notoriously unreliable. It's not bad to use this kind of evidence, but you do have a problem if you consider any witness statement to be absolute truth and never consider any "reasonable doubt" there may be, and this is how you end up convicting people based purely on "I saw the suspect commit the crime from 50 metres away in the dark and I'm sure it was him!" or some such.

If you have six independent witness statements like that, or a witness statement and fingerprints then the reasonable doubt starts becoming a lot less reasonable.

This is also the problem with the case in this article: a piece of evidence over which it seems like reasonable doubt should exists is the singular piece of evidence tying this person to the crime. The problem here isn't the evidence as such IMHO, but that juries and/or defenders (depends on the case) seem exceedingly bad at sceptically examining physical evidence.

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

#78

Post by monetus »

giantg2 wrote: post #65
monetus wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Not who you responded to) https://www.crammlawfirm.com/fingerprint-match-jails-innocen... This isn't the case I originally recalled, and doesn't say how many points were matched, but I remember a 5 point match being used to convict a person who was later proven innocent.

Oh, yeah. I've heard of them using too few points. I would have lumped that into misconduct or mistakes by the lab tech or prosecution.

Yeah, knowing or not, comparing with too few points is misconduct - that should be the fault of someone besides the defense, but that is somewhat tangential - does anyone with more knowledge know where the line is drawn? I imagine there are some outlandish coincedences happening.

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

#79

Post by dylan604 »

coldtea wrote: post #41
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.…

> So the AI didn’t even make the call. The staff did, manually. (a) The staff of the company who makes the AI, which would have an incentive to make the AI's original judgement appear accurate? (b) The staff of a company paid by the state/police, which aims to please its customers? (c) Was the staff trained/experts in recognizing such sounds, or were they random AI company employees, which just made a judgement call?…

It could come at the behest of police as in "it would be really helpful to our case if there was ShotSpotter evidence to support our cased". It could come from the fact that ShotSpotter is losing customers, and willing to do anything to make the product "feel" more valuable to the police to ensure cash cows keep producing.

The modern criminal investigation has so much negative baggage attached, from historical shenianigans, that it's easy to find ways to question the prosecution's case.

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

#80

Post by tzs »

wyager wrote: post #46
giantg2 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Fingerprinting is junk science. Polygraphs are junk science. Tons of things that have been or are admissible as evidence are junk science.

> Fingerprinting is junk science.

How then do you explain the success of Touch ID on Apple devices and the equivalent systems on other phones and tablets?

Random people can't just walk up and unlock a Touch ID device with their fingerprint, which suggests that fingerprints are in fact a very good way to tell people apart.

Yes, it is possible to make a fake fingerprint that Touch ID will not be able to distinguish from my fingerprint. But that fake fingerprint will only unlock my device, not your device, so it is still correctly distinguishing our fingerprints.

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