This has been a thing since 2017: https://futurism.com/facial-recognition-china-social-credit
- "Since April 2017, this city in China's Guangdong province has deployed a rather intense technique to deter jaywalking. Anyone who crosses against the light will find their face, name, and part of their government ID number displayed on a large LED screen above the intersection, thanks to facial recognition devices all over the city."
- "If that feels invasive, you don't even know the half of it. Now, Motherboard reports that a Chinese artificial intelligence company is partnering the system with mobile carriers, so that offenders receive a text message with a fine as soon as they are caught."
Top Left Panel: This panel shows the pedestrian crossing with no visible jaywalking. The crossing stripes are clear, and there are no pedestrians on them.
Top Center Panel: Similar to the top left, it shows the crossing, and there is no evidence of jaywalking.
Top Right Panel: This panel is mostly obscured by an overlaid image of a person's face, making it impossible to determine if there is any jaywalking.
Bottom Left Panel: It is difficult to discern specific details because of the low resolution and the angle of the shot. The red text overlays may be covering some parts of the scene, but from what is visible, there do not appear to be any individuals on the crossing.
Bottom Right Panel: This panel contains text and does not provide a clear view of the pedestrian crossing or any individuals that might be jaywalking.
Applying that to many walks of life, say farming, could well see chaos and a whole new interpretation to the song "Old McDonald had a farm, AI AI oh", it's gone as McDonald is in jail for numerous permit, environmental and agricultural regulations that saw produce cross state lines deeming it more serious a crime as he got buried in automated red-tape.
There are signs all over the city that are regularly ignored which basically means you're at the mercy of the cops. If they dob't like you you get a ticket. AI would "hopeful" just ticket everyone.
Consistent enforcement with much lower, escalating fines would do a lot more to actually change behaviour. And the only way to get there at scale is via a lot of automation.
Road safety in the end is a commons, just like littering. No one person's action is going to make the difference, but coordinated effort is only possible when there's enough public sentiment to get a central mandate together.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapons_of_Math_Destruction
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Power_and_Human_Reaso...
Sabotage will be the name of the game at that point. Find ways to quietly confuse, poison, overwhelm and undermine the system without attracting the attention of the monitoring apparatus.
As per the sabotage part, bad input data that does not accurately get labeled as such until way too late in the “AI learning cycle” is I think the way to go. Lots and lots of such bad input data. How we would get to that point, that I don’t know yet, but it’s a valid option going forward.
Chaos engineering. As a modern example, all this gender identity stuff wreaks absolute havoc on credit bureau databases.
Tomorrow, we'll have people running around in fursuits to avoid facial recognition. After that, who knows.
Strong (and unhealthy) biases already exist when using this tech, but I am not sure that is the lever to pull that will fix the problem.
Why do we have due process? One key reason is that it gives people the opportunity to be heard. One could argue that being heard by an AI is no different from being heard by a human, just more efficient.
But why do people want the opportunity to be heard? It’s partly the obvious, to have a chance to defend oneself against unjust exercises of power, and of course against simple error. But it’s also so that one can feel heard and not powerless. If the exercise of justice requires either brutal force or broad consent, giving people the feeling of being heard and able to defend themselves encourages broad consent.
Being heard by an AI then has a brutal defect, it doesn’t make people feel heard. A big part of this may come from the idea that an AI cannot be held accountable if it is wrong or if it is acting unfairly.
Justice, then, becomes a force of nature. I think we like to pretend justice is a force of nature anyway, but it’s really not. It’s man-made.
This is a hypothesis.
I would say that the consumers of now-unsexed "AI" sex-chat-bots (Replika) felt differently. So there are actually people who feel heard talking to an AI. Who knows, if it gets good enough maybe more of us would feel that way.
eg AI will analyze stock trades for the SEC and surface likely insider trading. Pretty sure they already use tools like Palantir to do exactly this, it's just that advanced AI will supercharge this even further.
Eh, this is problematic for a number of reasons that need addressed when adding any component that can increase the workload for said humans. This will cause people to take shortcuts that commonly lead to groups that are less able to represent and defend themselves legally taking the brunt of the prosecutions.
Or the AI just sends a text message to all the cops in the area saying "this person has committed a crime". Like this case where cameras read license plates, check to see if the car is stolen, and then text nearby cops. At least when it works and doesn't flag innocent people like in the below case:
Not many people have exercised this right with respect to DUI breathalyzers but it exists and was affirmed by the Supreme Court. And it will also apply to AI.
If the same monitoring is present on buses and private planes, homeless hostels and mega-mansions then it absolutely is better.
It's like pondering hypotheticals about what would happen if we lived in Middle Earth.
- Every endorsement of authoritarian rule ever
“For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.”
I've watched it play out on my mother-in-law's street. What was once a quiet dead end street is now a noisy, heavily trafficked road because a large apartment building was put up at the end.
The number of freedom-to people have significantly decreased her quality of life blasting music as they walk or drive by at all hours, along with a litany of other complaints that range from anti-social to outright illegal behavior. Even setting aside the illegal stuff, she is significantly less happy living where she is now.
Consider how little freedom you would have if laws were enforced to the lowest common denominator of what people find acceptable.
For instance I lose almost nothing by not having the freedom to carry a weapon (UK) as I have no desire to do so, while gaining a lot from having the freedom to not risk my child being murdered at school.
It's an extreme example but applies to a lesser degree for other freedoms, and I've personally found I often benefit more from freedoms-from than freedoms-to.
I'd love it if no vehicle could exceed 30 mph in town as I gain almost no benefit from being able to do so, while taking on significant risk from others being able to.
If suddenly you could be effectively found and prosecuted for every single law that existed it is near a 100% probability that you'd burn the government to the ground in a week.
There are so many laws no one can even tell you how many you are subject to at any given time at any given location.
The full body of legislation is riddled with contradiction, inconsistency, ambiguity and the pretense that "legislated upon = fair" is at best a schoolroom fantasy.
I think this depends on the law. For jaywalking, sure. For murder and robbery probably less so. And law enforcement resources seem scarce on all of them.
https://www.kxan.com/news/national-news/traffic-tickets-can-...
>We counted the number of days judges waited before suspending a driver’s license. Then, we looked at whether the city was experiencing a revenue shortfall. We found that judges suspend licenses faster when their cities need more money. The effect was pretty large: A 1% decrease in revenue caused licenses to be suspended three days faster.
So what typically happens is these AI systems are sold at catching murderers, but at the end of the day they are revenue generation systems for tickets. And then those systems get stuck in places where a smaller percent of the population can afford lawyers to prevent said ticketing systems from becoming cost centers.
There are plenty of crimes where 100% enforcement is highly desirable: pickpocketing, carjacking, (arguably) graffiti, murder, reckless and impaired driving, to name a few.
Ultimately, in situations with near 100% enforcement, you shouldn’t actually need much punishment because people learn not to do those things. And when there is punishment, it doesn’t need to be severe.
Deterrence theory is an interesting field of study, one source but there are many: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/14773708211072...
Unfortunately different people have different definitions of "harm" and "effectiveness". What one person consider a, "positive increase in behavior" another might consider a grievous violation of their freedom and personal autonomy. For example there is an ongoing debate about compelled speech. Some people view it as positive and desirable to use the force of law to compel people refer to others as they wish to be referred, while others strongly support their freedom to speak freely, even if others are offended. Who gets to program the AI with their definition of positivity in this case?
A free society demands a somewhat narrowly tailored set of laws that govern behavior (especially interpersonal behavior). An ever-present AI that monitors us all the time and tries to steer (or worse, compel with the force of law) all of our daily behaviors is the opposite of freedom, it is the worst kind of totalitarianism.
The conversation changes when you are talking about prescribing a set of behaviors that are universally considered, "good" and are pushed (and possibly demanded) by an ever-present AI that is constantly looking over your shoulder and judging your behavior (and possibly thoughts) by this preset behavioral standard that may or may not match your own preferences. This is totalitarianism beyond anything Orwell ever imagined. What you consider good and desirable, someone else considers bad and despicable. That is the essence of freedom. In a free society, the law exists (or should exist) only to stop you two from hitting each other over the head or engaging in other acts of overt violence and aggression, not to attempt to brainwash and coerce one of you into falling into line.
I think what you're saying is that it's hard to meditate between everyone which is true. Perhaps you are also saying that the implication of a standard of correctness is inherently totalitarian. It's seems to me you weakened that by admitting there are things that should be universally barred in free societies. Violence was your reference but murder might be even easier. Easier yet that breast cancer is bad? We make allowances for boxing and war but broad agreement can be found in society and across societies by careful anthropologists.
However, it seems you project over me (or perhaps the AI) a "Highlander hypothesis" that there can be only one correctness or even any notion of correct within the system. Such a system can operate simply on what appears to be with strings of evidence for such description. As you note, beyond a small set of mostly-agreed-to matters we are more diverse and there are spectrums spanning scoped policies (say by public and private institutions) all the way to individual relationship agreements custom fit to two. It is, in fact, the nature of a free society to allow us such diversity and self selection of the rules we apply to ourselves (or not). An ever present AI could meditate compatibilities, translate paradigms to reduce misunderstanding or adverse outcomes (as expected by the system over the involved parties), and generally scale the social knowing and selection of one another. It could provide a guide to navigating life and education for our self knowing and choosing of our participation more broadly. The notion there isn't to define correctness so much as to see what is and facilitate self selection of individual correctnesses as based on our life choices and expressed preferences.
To be honest in closing, this has dipped into some idealisms and I don't mean to be confused in suggesting a probability of such outcomes.
Many of our criminal laws are written with the implicit assumption that it takes resources to investigate and prosecute a crime, and that this will limit the effective scope of the law. Prosecutorial discretion.
Putting aside for the moment the (very serious) injustice that comes with the inequitable use of prosecutorial discretion, let's imagine a world without this discretion. Perhaps it's contrived, but one could imagine AI making it at least possible. Even by the book as it's currently written, is it a better world?
Suddenly, an AI monitoring public activity can trigger an AI investigator to draft a warrant to be signed by an AI judge to approve the warrant and draft an opinion. One could argue that due process is had, and a record is available to the public showing that there was in fact probable cause for further investigation or even arrest.
Maybe a ticket just pops out of the wall like in Demolition Man, but listing in writing clearly articulated probable cause and well-presented evidence.
Investigating and prosecuting silly examples suddenly becomes possible. A CCTV camera catches someone finding a $20 bill on the street, and finds that they didn't report it on their tax return. The myriad of ways one can violate the CFAA. A passing mention of music piracy on a subway train can become an investigation and prosecution. Dilated pupils and a staggering gait could support a drug investigation. Heck, jaywalking tickets given out as though by speed camera. Who cares if the juice wasn't worth the squeeze when it's a cheap AI doing the squeezing.
Is this a better world, or have we just all subjected ourselves to a life hyper-analyzed by a motivated prosecutor.
Turning back in the general direction of reality, I'm aware that arguing "if we enforced all of our laws, it would be chaos" is more an indictment of our criminal justice system than it is of AI. I think that AI gives us a lens to imagine a world where we actually do that, however. And maybe thinking about it will help us build a better system.