Comment on Police departments are using AI to review bodycam footage, and police unions are not happy about it
RotaryKeyboard@lemmy.sdf.org 9 months ago
Using AI to flag footage for review by a person seems like a good time-saving practice. I would bet that without some kind of automation like this, a lot of footage would just go unreviewed. This is far better than waiting for someone to lodge a complaint first, since you could conceivably identify problem behaviors and fix them before someone gets hurt.
The use of AI-based solutions to examine body-cam footage, however, is getting pushback from police unions pressuring the departments not to make the findings public to save potentially problematic officers.
According to this, the unions are against this because they want to shield bad-behaving officers. That tells me the AI review is working!
Exactly, and this also contradicts the “few bad apples” defense. If there were only a few bad apples, then the police unions should be bending over backwards to eradicate them sooner than later to preserve and improve the long suffering reputation of police.
Instead, they’re doing the exact opposite, making it clear to anyone paying attention that it’s mostly, if not entirely, bad apples.
You’ve got it backwards.
The phrase is “A few bad apples spoil the bunch”. It means everyone around the bad apples is also bad, because they’re all around and do nothing about it. It’s not a defense, it’s literally explaining what your comment says.
I think that poster is right in this context. It gets abbreviated and used as a defense of there just being “a few bad apples” and they they just drop/ignore the reset of the phrase.
The whole police thing and public accountability kinda makes sense, but I don’t think this means we should be pushing on AI just because the “bad guys” don’t like it.
AI is full of holes and unknowns. And relying on it to do stuff like this is a dangerous precedent IMO. You absolutely need someone reviewing it, yes. But they’re also not going to catch everything and starting with this will mean it will start being leaned on and it will replace thorough reviews by people.
I think something low stakes and unobtainable without the tools might make sense - like AIs reading through game chat or Twitter posts to identify issues where it’s impossible to have someone reading everything, and if some get by, oh well it’s a post on the internet.
But with police behavior? Those are people with the authority to ruin people’s lives or kill them. I do NOT trust AI to catch every problematic behavior and this stuff ABSOLUTELY should be done by people. I’d be okay with it as an aid, in theory, but once it’s doing any “aiding” it’s also approving some behavior. It can’t really be telling anyone where TO look without implying where NOT to look, and that gives it some authority, even as an “aid”. If it’s not making decisions, it’s not saving anyone any time.
Idk, I’m all for the public accountability and stuff like that here, but having AI make decisions around the behavior of people with so much fucking power is horrifying to me.
An AI art website I use illustrates your point perfectly with its attempt at automatic content filtering. Tons of innocent images get flagged, meanwhile problem content often gets through and has to be whacked manually. Relying on AI to catch everything, without false positives, is a recipe for disaster.
Still better than what he have now, where the footage usually isn’t reviewed at all.
I really don’t think it’s better than nothing. You put a biased AI in charge of reviewing footage and now they have a reason to say they’re doing the right thing instead of doing nothing, despite what they’re doing being worse.
Man, you said everything I wanted to in less than half the words. Shoulda just linked to your comment lol
jaybone@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I bet if they made all footage publicly available, watchdog style groups would be reviewing the shit out of that footage. But yeah AI might help too maybe.
Scubus@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
While I agree wholeheartedly, that is unrealistic due to laws. You can’t reveal certain suspects identity because for certain crimes, like pedophilia, people will attempt to execute the suspect before they know whether or not they actually did it.
LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee 9 months ago
I mean police footage would be privacy invading as hell for victims and even just bystanders.
gaylord_fartmaster@lemmy.world 9 months ago
A charge being filed against someone is already public record in the majority of areas in the United States, as well as any court records resulting from those charges.
Scubus@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
I forgot to add suspects that are minors, not positive but pretty sure they can’t be shown either.