>Omnilert later admitted the incident was a “false positive” but claimed the system “functioned as intended,” saying its purpose is to “prioritize safety and awareness through rapid human verification.”
It's ok everyone, you're safer now that police are pointing a gun at you, because of a bag of chips ... just to be safe.
/s
Absolutely ridiculous. We're living "computer said you did it, prove otherwise, at gunpoint".
Omnilert later admitted the incident was a “false positive” but claimed the system “functioned as intended,” saying its purpose is to “prioritize safety and awareness through rapid human verification.”
prioritize your own safety by not attending any location fitted with such a system, or deemed to be such a dangerous environment that such a system is desired.
Walking through TSA scanners, I always get that unnerving feeling I will get pulled aside. 50% of the time they flag my cargo pants because of the zipper pockets - There is nothing in them but the scanner doesn't like them.
Now we get the privilege of walking by AI security cameras placed in random locations, hoping they don't flag us.
There's a ton of money to be made with this kind of global frisking, so lots of pressure to roll out more and more systems.
I don't often fly, but back when I went to germany on a school trip, on the return flight I got pulled aside into a small room by whatever the german equivalent of TSA is and they swabbed the skin of my belly, and the inside of my bag. I'm guessing it was a drugs check and I must have just looked shifty because I get nervous in situations like that, but I do find it funny that they pulled me aside instead of the guys with me who almost certainly had something on them.
Also my partner has told me that apparently my armpits sometimes smell of weed or beer, despite me not coming in contact with either of those for a very long time, and now I definitely don't want to get taken into a small room by a TSA person (After some googling, apparently those smells can be associated with high stress)
>> Omnilert later admitted the incident was a “false positive” but claimed the system “functioned as intended,” saying its purpose is to “prioritize safety and awareness through rapid human verification.”
No. If you're investigating someone and have existing reason to believe they are armed then this kind of false positive might be prioritizing safety. But in a general surveillance of a public place, IMHO you need to prioritize accuracy since false positives are very bad. This kid was one itchy trigger-pull away from death over nothing - that's not erring on the side of safety. You don't have to catch every criminal by putting everyone under a microscope, you should be catching the blatantly obvious ones at scale though.
If these AI video based gun detectors are not a massive fraud I will eat one.
How on Earth does a person walk with a concealed gun? What does a woman in a skirt with one taped to her thigh walk like?
What does a man in a bulky sweatshirt with a pistol on his back walk like?
What does a teenager in wide legged cargo jeans with two pistols and a extra magazines walk like?
A bunch of companies and people invested unimaginable amounts of money in these technologies in the hope they will multiply that money. They will showe it down our throats no matter what, this isn't about security and making the world a better place, saving lives or preventing bad things to happen, this is strictly about those people and companies making as much money as possible, or at least for now not losing the money they invested.
Imagine the head scratching that's going on with execs who are surprised things might work when a probabilistic software is being used for deterministic purposes without realizing there's a gap between it kind of by nature.
I'm sure there will be no head scratching. They already know that this can happen, and don't care, because they know that if someone gets killed because of it, they won't be held responsible. And may not even lose any customers.
I think it's almost guaranteed that this model has race-related biases, so no, I don't think you're kidding at all. I think it's entirely likely that an Asian (or white) kid of the same build, wearing the same clothes, with a crumpled-up bag of Doritos in his pocket, would not get flagged as having a gun.
Ah, the coming age of Palantir's all seeing platform; and Peter Thiel becoming the shadow Emperor. Too bad non-deterministic ml systems are prone to errors that risk lives when applied wrongly to crucial parts of society. But in an authoritarian state, those will be hidden away anyway, so there's nothing to see here: move along folks. Yes, surveillance and authoritarianism go hand in hand, ask China. It's important to protest these methods and push lawmakers to act against them; now, before it's too late.
Stuff like this feels like some company has managed to monetize an open source object detection model like YOLO [1], creating something that could be cobbled together relatively easily, and then sold it as advance AI capabilities. (You'd hope they've have at least fine-tuned it / have a good training dataset.)
We've got a model out there now that we've just seen has put someone's life at risk... Does anyone apart from that company actually know how accurate it is? What it's been trained on? Its false positive rate? If we are going to start rolling out stuff like this, should it not be mandatory for stats / figures to be published? For us to know more about the model, and what it was trained on?
The guidance counselor does not have the training or time to "fix" the trauma you just gave this kid and his friends. Insane to put minors through this.
With high level of hallucination, cops need to tranquilizers more. If the student had reached for his bag just before the cops arrived, BLM 2.0 would have started.
96 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 64.8 ms ] threadIt's ok everyone, you're safer now that police are pointing a gun at you, because of a bag of chips ... just to be safe.
/s
Absolutely ridiculous. We're living "computer said you did it, prove otherwise, at gunpoint".
prioritize your own safety by not attending any location fitted with such a system, or deemed to be such a dangerous environment that such a system is desired.
the AI "swatted" someone.
Now we get the privilege of walking by AI security cameras placed in random locations, hoping they don't flag us.
There's a ton of money to be made with this kind of global frisking, so lots of pressure to roll out more and more systems.
How does this not spiral out of control?
Also my partner has told me that apparently my armpits sometimes smell of weed or beer, despite me not coming in contact with either of those for a very long time, and now I definitely don't want to get taken into a small room by a TSA person (After some googling, apparently those smells can be associated with high stress)
No. If you're investigating someone and have existing reason to believe they are armed then this kind of false positive might be prioritizing safety. But in a general surveillance of a public place, IMHO you need to prioritize accuracy since false positives are very bad. This kid was one itchy trigger-pull away from death over nothing - that's not erring on the side of safety. You don't have to catch every criminal by putting everyone under a microscope, you should be catching the blatantly obvious ones at scale though.
Behold - a real life example of a "Not a hotdog" system, except this one is gun / not-a-gun.
Except the fictional one from the series was more accurate...
How on Earth does a person walk with a concealed gun? What does a woman in a skirt with one taped to her thigh walk like? What does a man in a bulky sweatshirt with a pistol on his back walk like? What does a teenager in wide legged cargo jeans with two pistols and a extra magazines walk like?
Imagine the head scratching that's going on with execs who are surprised things might work when a probabilistic software is being used for deterministic purposes without realizing there's a gap between it kind of by nature.
Or am I kidding? AI is only as good as its training and humans are...not bastions of integrity...
I expect a school to be smart enough to say “Yes, this is a terrible situation, and we’re taking a closer look at the risks involved here.”
But ……
Doritos should definitely use this as an advertisement, Doritos - The only weapon of mass deliciousness, or something like that
And of course pay the kid, so something positive came come out of the experience for him
I wonder how effective an apology and explanation would have been? Just some respect.
I thought those two things were impossible?
We've got a model out there now that we've just seen has put someone's life at risk... Does anyone apart from that company actually know how accurate it is? What it's been trained on? Its false positive rate? If we are going to start rolling out stuff like this, should it not be mandatory for stats / figures to be published? For us to know more about the model, and what it was trained on?
[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1506.02640