• snooggums@lemmy.world
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    9 days ago

    It isn’t predicting individual crimes, just pattern recognition and extrapolation like how the weather is predicted.

    “There are on average 4 shootings in November in this general area so there probably will be 4 again this year.” is the kind of prediction that AI is making.

      • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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        8 days ago

        That’s also how communist attempts at building a better civilization work. They can’t avoid that base of their ideology where one human classification of reality takes precedence over life. So they have plans. Plan for steel production, plan for grain production, plan for convicted criminals.

        You are falling behind the plan? Have to arrest someone. Someone. There’s a weird teen walking there, let’s tie him to a battery and beat him till he signs a paper saying he stole some shit.

        The plan is overshot? Won’t bother if there’s a gang-rape with murder before the police station with some policemen participating.

        What I don’t understand is why people want to do that again, just with clueless (not possessing the necessary information) planners replaced with clueless (for the same reason) machines.

        Even USSR’s problems with planning were mostly not due to insufficient computational resources (people from today think those were miserable, but let’s please remember that they were programmed by better and more qualified people that most of today’s programmers), but due to power balance in hierarchy meaning that planning was bent for the wishes of power. In other words, plans were made for what people on important posts wanted to see, and didn’t account for what people on other important posts didn’t want to share. Just like it’s going to be with any system. Tech doesn’t solve power balance by itself.

          • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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            8 days ago

            Yes, I am.

            There are a few associations between the subject of this thread and marxism.

            The most obvious being the opinion that one can create a machine that will transform society’s hierarchy, and using AI in law enforcement is actually part of that.

            The less obvious being that USSR’s catching up game, where they’d blindly copy (sometimes mostly in appearances) things first popularized in the West via market processes, is similar to what “AI”'s do.

            Another being that preventing a crime via some predictor can’t be verified against reality, because, ahem, it’s preventive. Just like conviction plans for police can’t be checked against reality.

            Another being that police discomforting or even surveilling people based on some predictor is almost a punishment, for something they haven’t done. It’s like a thought crime. It brings one’s rights to the level of what a USSR citizen had, basically.

            • Glytch@lemmy.world
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              8 days ago

              Another being that police discomforting or even surveilling people based on some predictor is almost a punishment, for something they haven’t done. It’s like a thought crime. It brings one’s rights to the level of what a USSR citizen had, basically.

              Or to the level of a black person in modern Capitalist America. Your point isn’t about communism, it’s about authoritarianism.

              • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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                8 days ago

                Of course.

                However, one can recall that Democrats before the “switch” were kinda racist and kinda liberal at the same time. So it wasn’t a complete switch between the parties. And that this is because that kind of “liberal” is, similarly to marxism, about having some “more fair” society, but only the way you want, impeding your opponents trying to change their parts of society the way they want.

                That my point is more about fragmentation. Say, from what I’ve read, it seems that somewhere in 70s you could find towns and districts where you’d be absolutely abused for being Black and there, but you could also find normal ones.

                The issue with trying to solve the problem of the former by some centralized pressure is that it creates the same instruments that could be used to “solve” the “problem” of the latter, and worse - introduce new problems.

                More than that, structurally it averages to the worse, because crowds are as smart as the dumbest and worst person in them.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      8 days ago

      So they are using it to try and decide on deployment?

      If that is all they’re using it for I guess it isn’t too bad. As long as it isn’t accusing individuals of planning to commit a crime with a zero evidence.

      • snooggums@lemmy.world
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        8 days ago

        It is probably going to be used to justify the disproportionate police attention paid to minority communities and to justify activities similar to stop and frisk.

        • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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          8 days ago

          The thing is don’t they already have crime stats? Presumably they’re already using them as justification so this won’t change much.

      • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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        8 days ago

        No, it’s bad, because ultimately it’s not leading anywhere, such tools can’t be used by unqualified people not understanding how they work (not many qualified people do too, my teamlead at work, for example, is enthusiastic and just doesn’t seem to hear arguments against, at least those I can make with my ADHD, that is, avoiding detailed explanations to the bone).

        If ultimately it’s not applicable where people want to apply it, it shouldn’t even be tested.

        This is giving such applications credibility.

        It’s the slippery slope that some people think doesn’t exist. Actually they exist everywhere.