Police Departments Are Turning to AI to Sift Through Millions of Hours of Unreviewed Body-Cam Footage (www.propublica.org)
from Zen@biglemmowski.win to technology@lemmy.world on 02 Feb 2024 22:27
https://biglemmowski.win/post/591872

#technology

threaded - newest

OmnislashIsACloudApp@lemmy.world on 02 Feb 2024 22:41 next collapse

oh great I’m sure the training for this will not result in a bunch of things getting “reviewed” and no one being responsible for mistakes at all…

1984@lemmy.today on 03 Feb 2024 06:32 collapse

Sounds like humans, so I guess it’s AI progress? :p

[deleted] on 02 Feb 2024 23:24 next collapse

.

Mamertine@lemmy.world on 03 Feb 2024 03:06 next collapse

Is it really any different than when the formula did it?

When Apple launched their credit card it was super biased against applicants with female names. They blamed it on the formula.

Ai is just the newest fancy word for programming.

assassinatedbyCIA@lemmy.world on 03 Feb 2024 11:49 collapse

By formula do you mean algorithm

Mamertine@lemmy.world on 03 Feb 2024 13:43 collapse

Is an algorithm not a formula?

gramathy@lemmy.ml on 03 Feb 2024 16:00 collapse

Some algorithms might be able to be written as formulas but generally no. An algorithm is a repetition of steps to achieve a desired result and does not have a fixed way of representing itself because it could make different decisions along the way in different situations.

A sorting algorithm is not a formula, for example. Formulas are mathematical or logical expressions that can be evaluated.

ech@lemm.ee on 03 Feb 2024 05:00 next collapse

The AI has denied your cancer treatment claim. you insurance based on your genetic history for cancer, thanks to buying your genome from [insert company that bought out 23andMe/Ancestry.com]

ftfy

Misconduct@lemmy.world on 03 Feb 2024 15:24 collapse

So, really not any different than now

DontMakeMoreBabies@kbin.social on 02 Feb 2024 23:47 next collapse

Would you rather these things never be reviewed? Isn't something better than nothing?

You'll literally never be able to afford (or hire) enough people to review the data they are taking in...

I mean unless we start killing billionaires and taking their shit.

otter@lemmy.ca on 02 Feb 2024 23:59 next collapse

Yea I share the same concerns about the “AI”, but this sounds like a good thing. It’s going through footage that wasn’t going to be looked at (because there wasn’t a complaint / investigation), and it’s flagging things that should be reviewed. It’s a positive step

What we should look into for this program is

  • how the flags are being set, and what kind of interaction will warrant a flag
  • what changes are made to training as a result of this data
  • how the privacy is being handled, and where the data is going (ex. Don’t use this footage to train some model, especially because not every interaction is out in the public)
PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee on 03 Feb 2024 00:09 next collapse

Well I mean you could rig the cameras to turn on when the cop gets out of their car to break the footage into specific encounters where the cop had to interact with someone. Identify the files by the date, time, and badge number of the cop the camera is assigned to, and now you’ve got an easy to search database of footage whenever an incident is reported either by the cop because they had to issue paperwork for it or by whoever they were interacting with because they want to lodge a complaint.

While randomly selecting files not involved in ongoing investigation as potential training material could be helpful, we don’t actually HAVE to have an assigned review resource to scan for bad behaviour or relevant material to investigations since in both cases someone is incentivized to start the process that will pull the relevant footage anyways.

Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca on 03 Feb 2024 02:33 next collapse

Make it publicly accessible. It’ll most certainly get watched and problems will be reported to be investigated further.

Hawk@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 03 Feb 2024 11:14 collapse

Corporations would be delighted to analyze all this footage.

Rivalarrival@lemmy.today on 03 Feb 2024 04:28 next collapse

File a complaint, and you get to view the video. If nobody files a complaint, there is no need to view the video.

Indeed, nobody should be looking at the video unless a complaint is filed.

MaxPow3r11@lemmy.world on 03 Feb 2024 14:17 collapse

WE should be able to review it/see it ALL.

We pay these fucks to torture and kill with our tax $.

They should have nothing to hide from us.

[deleted] on 02 Feb 2024 23:55 next collapse

.

badbytes@lemmy.world on 03 Feb 2024 00:41 next collapse

And I’m sure the criminal acts by police will get filtered out.

Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca on 03 Feb 2024 01:08 next collapse

Yes, because AI has a firm grasp on nuanced topics like law enforcement and civilian/human rights…

You may as well play the video to an empty room.

terminhell@lemmy.world on 03 Feb 2024 01:56 next collapse

What if all the cam footage was just uploaded to something like YouTube. Publicly visible by ya know, the very citizens that pay for it and work for…

AceFuzzLord@lemm.ee on 03 Feb 2024 06:03 next collapse

That feels like it would be a logistics and a just in general nightmare. Does every single individual have an account where they’re forced to stream their footage? If not and it’s all being uploaded to a single channel for a department, who’s in charge of the task of uploading the footage? Who’d even be willing to spend their days doing nothing but uploading footage when your departments internal internet connection comes to a crawl speed because of the person(s) who has/have to upload the footage (because you just know they certainly ain’t paying for them to have their own private network for this in most areas)?

In theory it sounds great but in practice it just sounds like a nightmare. Not defending the police but it just doesn’t seem like a task they’d be willing to take up because of all the work they’d have to put in to make sure it works.

That, and the money they spend doing something like this could obviously be used on something more pressing, like shooting a black man because he didn’t get down on the ground and worship the boots of the officer that killed him after being pulled over on suspicion of absolutely nothing (/s on this part)

mmcintyre@lemmy.world on 03 Feb 2024 16:28 collapse

If they ain’t up to the task, then they could just quit. I don’t see the problem.

Hawk@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 03 Feb 2024 11:13 collapse

Wouldn’t that be a huge privacy issue?

lir@lemmy.world on 04 Feb 2024 13:32 collapse

The police are already a huge rights issue when they’re acting without oversight

Evkob@lemmy.ca on 03 Feb 2024 02:26 next collapse

Body camera video equivalent of 25 million copies of “Barbie”

Is this a typical unit of measurement in journalism? Like what even is this? Crappy in-article advertising? Some weird SEO shit? An odd attempt to be cool and hip?

Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca on 03 Feb 2024 02:31 next collapse

It’s America; anything but metric.

Misconduct@lemmy.world on 03 Feb 2024 15:19 next collapse

Ah yes, the metric measurement of time. My favorite.

Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca on 03 Feb 2024 15:54 collapse

metric-time.com

Misconduct@lemmy.world on 04 Feb 2024 01:16 collapse

Your point? It’s still not really a valid comment. Just a braindead joke that’s played out even when it’s actually relevant lol

AtmaJnana@lemmy.world on 03 Feb 2024 15:26 collapse

And which “metric” unit of time measurement do you prefer?

Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca on 03 Feb 2024 15:54 collapse

Well, metric time, obviously:

metric-time.com

AtmaJnana@lemmy.world on 03 Feb 2024 16:24 collapse

I prefer seconds since 00:00:00 on Jan 1st, 1970

drbluefall@toast.ooo on 03 Feb 2024 03:02 next collapse

Yes.

HawlSera@lemm.ee on 04 Feb 2024 13:18 collapse

It’s the kind of phrasing you use when you’re paid for how long an article is, but not how good it is.

ech@lemm.ee on 03 Feb 2024 04:58 next collapse

Ah, good. I had “racist profiling AILLM” on my 2024 bingo card

FiskFisk33@startrek.website on 03 Feb 2024 08:39 next collapse

Body camera video equivalent to 25 million copies of “Barbie”

Literally anything but the metric system

a1studmuffin@aussie.zone on 03 Feb 2024 10:12 next collapse

We don’t even need to choose! Just use hours, months, years, decades! But no, Barbie movies.

Everythingispenguins@lemmy.world on 03 Feb 2024 12:21 next collapse

There is no common metric measure of time.

Edit -common

SkybreakerEngineer@lemmy.world on 03 Feb 2024 12:33 next collapse

I’m sorry, can you restate that in terms of the number of ground state transitions of a Cs-136 atom?

TonyTonyChopper@mander.xyz on 04 Feb 2024 00:49 collapse

The second is one of the 7 fundamental units

…m.wikipedia.org/…/International_System_of_Units

Everythingispenguins@lemmy.world on 04 Feb 2024 01:20 collapse

Yes it is, but SI is not all metric. Metric is fundamentally a base 10 system. Time is base 60 you can probably thank the ancient Sumerians for that but there’s some debate.

At one point the French tried to make metric time a thing but it didn’t stick.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_time

TonyTonyChopper@mander.xyz on 04 Feb 2024 03:55 collapse

Short times are always given in scales of 10 for seconds (ms, μs, ns). And long ones can be too.

Everythingispenguins@lemmy.world on 04 Feb 2024 13:07 collapse

And machinists in America use decimal inches, but I don’t think anyone would say that inches is metric.

Spelling

rickyrigatoni@lemm.ee on 03 Feb 2024 12:39 collapse

it’s called SEO and it’s an art

FiskFisk33@startrek.website on 04 Feb 2024 06:28 collapse

SEO os the bane of the internet. SEO is why i have to scroll through a novella every time i want to check out a recipe

maness300@lemmy.world on 04 Feb 2024 12:06 collapse

Oh that’s so fucking annoying, but I also think it’s part of the culture among those who typically submit recipes online.

FiskFisk33@startrek.website on 05 Feb 2024 05:00 collapse

it may have started that way, but now it’s all SEO

themurphy@lemmy.world on 03 Feb 2024 10:24 next collapse

ITT: People who are scared of things they don’t understand, which in this case is AI.

In this case, the “AI” program is nothing more than pattern recognition software setting a timestamp where it believes there’s something to be looked at. Then an officer can take a look.

It saves so much time, and it filters out anything irrelevant. But be careful because it’s labelled “AI”. Scarry.

EDIT: Comments to this comment confirms that you don’t understand AI, because if you did, you’d know that this system who scans video is not a LLM (large language model). It’s not even the same system in its core.

Killing_Spark@feddit.de on 03 Feb 2024 12:33 next collapse

It’s also potentially skipping some of the parts that should be looked at. It depends on the training set.

Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works on 03 Feb 2024 14:17 next collapse

This is an astonishingly bad take.

Almost every AI system is a black box. Even if you open source the code and the training data, it’s almost impossible to know anything about the current state of a machine learning model.

So the entire premise here is that a completely unaccountable system - whose decisions are basically impossible to understand or scrutinize - gets to decide what data is or isn’t relevant.

When an AI says “No crime spotted here”, who gets to even know that it did that? If a human is reviewing all of the footage, then why have the AI? You’re doing the same amount of human work anyway. So as soon as you introduce this system, you remove a huge amount of human oversight, and replace it with decisions that dramatically affect human lives - that could potentially be life or death if it’s the difference between a bad cop being taken off the street or not - being made by a completely unaccountable system.

Whose to say if the training data fed into this system results in it, say, becoming effectively blind to police violence against black people?

And if that doesn’t scare you, it absolutely should.

Misconduct@lemmy.world on 03 Feb 2024 15:16 collapse

It’s not impossible to understand or scrutinize. They give it specific things to look for. It does what it’s told. You can make the argument that ANY tool used by the police will be misused in their favor. AI isn’t special for that by any means. It’s not like we bother to hold anyone accountable for anything else now anyway. Maybe the AI will be less biased

It’s definitely not doing the same work as a human if humans are spared sifting through hours upon hours of less useful footage. I’m sure they’re testing it etc. Nobody goes all in on this stuff. Really, you guys can be so very dramatic lol

fluxion@lemmy.world on 03 Feb 2024 14:37 collapse

It’s not that AI is scary, it’s that AI is dumb as fuck.

octopus_ink@lemmy.ml on 03 Feb 2024 12:24 next collapse

That sounds like a big investment to find no wrongdoing by officers.

MaxPow3r11@lemmy.world on 03 Feb 2024 14:15 next collapse

“our Pig AI System searched all of the videos. No cop did anything wrong. Ever. The End” ~cop fucks

(Fuck this shit. As usual. Abolish police)

hex_m_hell@slrpnk.net on 03 Feb 2024 20:16 collapse

So funny thing, Seattle Police Department did a pilot for AI that did sentiment analysis on police audio and looked for things like racial slurs. They pretty quickly disbanded the project and destroyed the evidence.

seattletimes.com/…/decision-to-halt-program-analy…

(IIRC some folks requested info from the pilot and they claimed to have deleted it.)

HawlSera@lemm.ee on 04 Feb 2024 13:16 collapse

I wonder if it’s one of those AI that can’t see darker skin colors…