4 ms·

Regarding the automatic parking enforcement they claim, on the topic of non-discrimination: > The service works the same way for all license plates regardless

by avar 6y ago

Regarding the automatic parking enforcement they claim, on the topic of non-discrimination: > The service works the same way for all license plates regardless of the car model, age, or the owner’s profile. This whole thing seems to be designed to give the appearance of government transparency without any of the transparency. I bet if they released some "raw" (but anonymized) data from their collection it would be easy to find evidence of discrimination. E.g. some of the richest parts of the city have some of the smallest parking spots. Surely cars bunched up against each other lowers the accuracy rate. Same with certain car models with recessed areas holding the number plate, which again will have socio-economic correlations. I don't see how you could plausibly design a system like this without any discrimination built into it. But instead they just say there's no discrimination, without providing any of the source code, models or other data for the system. If they actually found that it was discriminatory does anyone think Amsterdam's first task would be to change its website to say "we're discriminating!", or would they just quietly try to fix it? That's the issue with these sorts of systems. At least if one poor neighborhood is full of parking attendants with none in the adjacent rich neighborhood people will notice sooner than later. You have almost none of that basic sorts of transparency with automated scanning.

bluesign 6y ago
I don’t see if one neighborhood is full of parking attendants and rich one is less proving discrimination. This is an optimization problem, you have limited capability of enforcement, and you need to use it with most efficient way.
- IkmoIkmo 6y ago
  > I don’t see if one neighborhood is full of parking attendants and rich one is less proving discrimination. Suppose only a poor neighbourhood has laws enforced, while in another there is no enforcement. Would that be discriminatory? I think in effect, absolutely. In terms of intentions, it remains to be seen what the reasons were, it could've been a mistake or a matter of optimising resources. But there are clearly limits to this argument, and it is also clearly discriminatory in practice. For example, racial profiling is very much a form of discrimination. Suppose two ethnicities live in a city, one (A) has a 0.5% serious crime rate, the other (B) has a 2% serious crime rate, on average, and say equal chance of minor offences. Profiling citizens of group B more often, e.g. stop & frisk, would be a more optimal use of police resources than random selection, to stop serious crimes. Yet, 98% of group B is innocent of serious crimes and is being subjected to more enforcement, which lead to a higher than proportionate conviction rate of minor offences, simply for belonging to a different ethnic group. It also leads to more run-ins with the police, which disturbs your day, risks escalation, makes you feel like a second-class citizen etc. That's discrimination, because the 98% innocent individuals from group B are being treated more harshly without cause, purely on the basis of their belonging to a group. Discrimination is when an individual is maltreated on the basis of belonging to a group, rather than as an individual. Yet also 'more optimal/efficient use of resources'. They're not mutually exclusive. And that's true not just within policing, by the way. If you know that 80% of ethnic group A have empirically been good hires, and 70% of ethnic group B, in the past, and suppose you had many people to choose from to invite for an interview, and then interview. Suppose you have limited resources and selection & interviewing is time-consuming. Does that allow you to 'optimize use of scarce resources and efficiently reject all applicants from group B'? No. It'd be perhaps efficient, but also very much discriminatory. Of course if you have two neighbourhoods and one has rampant parking abuse, the other not, then indeed it does make sense to allocate enforcement capacity accordingly. But only to a point. And that point must be evaluated. And whether you've reached that point, will be indicated by the data. That data isn't available, yet it's a priori stated that the parking enforcement cannot be discriminatory. OP noted a few possibilities that could indicate it is discriminatory, but we'd need to see the data to draw any conclusions. I think he's right in saying that.
  - bluesign 6y ago
    Yeah but you are mixing people in equation with your examples with ethnicity. Imagine two same ethnicity neighborhoods, with same economic wealth, one has crime rate 2% other 0.5%, would you think it would be discrimination to allocate more police force to 2% one? For the interview part, imagine I am saying I am only hiring CS graduates, and A ethnicity has 10% CS graduates, B has 1%, am I discriminating?
AndyMcConachie 6y ago
I think we can be pretty certain that the city of Amsterdam will do everything it can to discover and issue fines for more illegally parked cars. They're heavily incentivized to do so given that it's a not insignificant source of revenue. Is there discrimination? Probably. But over time as the system gets better and more fines get issued less illegal parkers will get away with it. That's the goal right, to fine everyone illegally parking. It's not as if right now you can park a car illegally in Amsterdam and expect to get away with it. That's never been the case regardless of where you parked. As we get closer to catching everyone discrimination becomes irrelevant, because as enforcement approaches 100% it becomes less and less selective. I live in Rotterdam and I don't own a car. So my priority is to see less space given to cars and for people who park cars pay more for parking. I don't actually care about discrimination because the general trend is for parking to get more expensive, and for urban areas to become more pedestrian friendly. I want more parking enforcement, fewer cars, and more revenue from car owners. My friends who own cars are constantly complaining about parking fees and I have little to no sympathy for them. For many people in The Netherlands cars are a luxury. Most people don't need them, and if they claim to need them they usually actually don't. This is especially true in Amsterdam. All of this leads me to have very little sympathy for any discrimination argument.
- avar 6y ago
  It's about government transparency and the precedent that's being set. You may not care about parking enforcement (neither do I, really), but in 10 years time this won't be the last thing ML is being used for. We're replacing systems that are readily obvious to anyone (uniformed human parking attendants) with algorithmic enforcement. The government has decided that we don't need to know how it works (source code and models) or what the flaws and externalities are (anonymized data on how it's used). Thus something we're paying for whose function was pretty obvious to anyone becomes a black box. This lack of transparency will become the norm unless it's opposed, and eventually you or your group will become the disproportionate target of some overzealous algorithm.
JrProgrammer 6y ago
If you look at the other projects, there's also a subsection on Non-discrimination. This specific example of the license plate registration doesn't have anything to do with discrimination because it simply checks the output of an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) algorithm with a database which consists of the location and time a certain license plate has paid for. The parking attendants just drive their vehicles and the OCR does its work. The only reason I see for the city of Amsterdam to include this subsection into the article is to tell the citizens that the part of license registration doesn't come into play until after the algorithm (or in case of a failure a human check) has decided that the license plate wasn't in the database on that point in time.
- IkmoIkmo 6y ago
  I see your point but as OP mentioned: 1) Where is the data that shows each street is equally/proportionally scanned by parking attendant vehicles? There is potential discriminatory policy there. 2) Where is the data that shows that scan-success rate (i.e., percentage of detected cars, for which a plate number could be made out) is distributed normally, rather than e.g. influenced by parking infrastructure which is correlated with socioeconomic factors? Again, potential discriminatory practice. Other possibilities exist, too. These may sound far fetched, and you may be right to say that, but the data would show it. It'd be nice to see the data. It cannot be said a priori that 'algorithm just checks the image, so there's no discrimination possible', if there's no word about ensuring that regardless of various factors (e.g. socioeconomic, racial etc), your non-compliance with parking rules has an equal chance of your plate being scanned and fed into the algorithm. It's the same issue why racial profiling is controversial. You can say 'this computer/algorithm is perfect at assessing non-compliance with a rule or regulation by individual X regardless of e.g. ethnicity', and you could still have discrimination because ethnic group A is fed into this system by way of racial profiling 10x more than ethnic group B. By the same token, we'd want to see where/how-often the scanning vehicles operate, and how their scans may have lower or higher success rates in various situations. In short, the OCR might be alright, but the entire process/model/architecture (from scanning to issuing a fine, in which OCR is just one of the middle-steps) may not be. That entire model including scanning (photographing) by a computer is described on the page, so saying its non-discriminatory implies they've assessed more than just the OCR step. And if that is the case, they cannot say it's a priori non-discriminatory quite yet without providing more info/data.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

by avar 6y ago

bluesign 6y ago

I don’t see if one neighborhood is full of parking attendants and rich one is less proving discrimination. This is an optimization problem, you have limited capability of enforcement, and you need to use it with most efficient way.

IkmoIkmo 6y ago
> I don’t see if one neighborhood is full of parking attendants and rich one is less proving discrimination. Suppose only a poor neighbourhood has laws enforced, while in another there is no enforcement. Would that be discriminatory? I think in effect, absolutely. In terms of intentions, it remains to be seen what the reasons were, it could've been a mistake or a matter of optimising resources. But there are clearly limits to this argument, and it is also clearly discriminatory in practice. For example, racial profiling is very much a form of discrimination. Suppose two ethnicities live in a city, one (A) has a 0.5% serious crime rate, the other (B) has a 2% serious crime rate, on average, and say equal chance of minor offences. Profiling citizens of group B more often, e.g. stop & frisk, would be a more optimal use of police resources than random selection, to stop serious crimes. Yet, 98% of group B is innocent of serious crimes and is being subjected to more enforcement, which lead to a higher than proportionate conviction rate of minor offences, simply for belonging to a different ethnic group. It also leads to more run-ins with the police, which disturbs your day, risks escalation, makes you feel like a second-class citizen etc. That's discrimination, because the 98% innocent individuals from group B are being treated more harshly without cause, purely on the basis of their belonging to a group. Discrimination is when an individual is maltreated on the basis of belonging to a group, rather than as an individual. Yet also 'more optimal/efficient use of resources'. They're not mutually exclusive. And that's true not just within policing, by the way. If you know that 80% of ethnic group A have empirically been good hires, and 70% of ethnic group B, in the past, and suppose you had many people to choose from to invite for an interview, and then interview. Suppose you have limited resources and selection & interviewing is time-consuming. Does that allow you to 'optimize use of scarce resources and efficiently reject all applicants from group B'? No. It'd be perhaps efficient, but also very much discriminatory. Of course if you have two neighbourhoods and one has rampant parking abuse, the other not, then indeed it does make sense to allocate enforcement capacity accordingly. But only to a point. And that point must be evaluated. And whether you've reached that point, will be indicated by the data. That data isn't available, yet it's a priori stated that the parking enforcement cannot be discriminatory. OP noted a few possibilities that could indicate it is discriminatory, but we'd need to see the data to draw any conclusions. I think he's right in saying that.
- bluesign 6y ago
  Yeah but you are mixing people in equation with your examples with ethnicity. Imagine two same ethnicity neighborhoods, with same economic wealth, one has crime rate 2% other 0.5%, would you think it would be discrimination to allocate more police force to 2% one? For the interview part, imagine I am saying I am only hiring CS graduates, and A ethnicity has 10% CS graduates, B has 1%, am I discriminating?

AndyMcConachie 6y ago

I think we can be pretty certain that the city of Amsterdam will do everything it can to discover and issue fines for more illegally parked cars. They're heavily incentivized to do so given that it's a not insignificant source of revenue. Is there discrimination? Probably. But over time as the system gets better and more fines get issued less illegal parkers will get away with it. That's the goal right, to fine everyone illegally parking. It's not as if right now you can park a car illegally in Amsterdam and expect to get away with it. That's never been the case regardless of where you parked. As we get closer to catching everyone discrimination becomes irrelevant, because as enforcement approaches 100% it becomes less and less selective. I live in Rotterdam and I don't own a car. So my priority is to see less space given to cars and for people who park cars pay more for parking. I don't actually care about discrimination because the general trend is for parking to get more expensive, and for urban areas to become more pedestrian friendly. I want more parking enforcement, fewer cars, and more revenue from car owners. My friends who own cars are constantly complaining about parking fees and I have little to no sympathy for them. For many people in The Netherlands cars are a luxury. Most people don't need them, and if they claim to need them they usually actually don't. This is especially true in Amsterdam. All of this leads me to have very little sympathy for any discrimination argument.

avar 6y ago
It's about government transparency and the precedent that's being set. You may not care about parking enforcement (neither do I, really), but in 10 years time this won't be the last thing ML is being used for. We're replacing systems that are readily obvious to anyone (uniformed human parking attendants) with algorithmic enforcement. The government has decided that we don't need to know how it works (source code and models) or what the flaws and externalities are (anonymized data on how it's used). Thus something we're paying for whose function was pretty obvious to anyone becomes a black box. This lack of transparency will become the norm unless it's opposed, and eventually you or your group will become the disproportionate target of some overzealous algorithm.

JrProgrammer 6y ago

If you look at the other projects, there's also a subsection on Non-discrimination. This specific example of the license plate registration doesn't have anything to do with discrimination because it simply checks the output of an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) algorithm with a database which consists of the location and time a certain license plate has paid for. The parking attendants just drive their vehicles and the OCR does its work. The only reason I see for the city of Amsterdam to include this subsection into the article is to tell the citizens that the part of license registration doesn't come into play until after the algorithm (or in case of a failure a human check) has decided that the license plate wasn't in the database on that point in time.

IkmoIkmo 6y ago
I see your point but as OP mentioned: 1) Where is the data that shows each street is equally/proportionally scanned by parking attendant vehicles? There is potential discriminatory policy there. 2) Where is the data that shows that scan-success rate (i.e., percentage of detected cars, for which a plate number could be made out) is distributed normally, rather than e.g. influenced by parking infrastructure which is correlated with socioeconomic factors? Again, potential discriminatory practice. Other possibilities exist, too. These may sound far fetched, and you may be right to say that, but the data would show it. It'd be nice to see the data. It cannot be said a priori that 'algorithm just checks the image, so there's no discrimination possible', if there's no word about ensuring that regardless of various factors (e.g. socioeconomic, racial etc), your non-compliance with parking rules has an equal chance of your plate being scanned and fed into the algorithm. It's the same issue why racial profiling is controversial. You can say 'this computer/algorithm is perfect at assessing non-compliance with a rule or regulation by individual X regardless of e.g. ethnicity', and you could still have discrimination because ethnic group A is fed into this system by way of racial profiling 10x more than ethnic group B. By the same token, we'd want to see where/how-often the scanning vehicles operate, and how their scans may have lower or higher success rates in various situations. In short, the OCR might be alright, but the entire process/model/architecture (from scanning to issuing a fine, in which OCR is just one of the middle-steps) may not be. That entire model including scanning (photographing) by a computer is described on the page, so saying its non-discriminatory implies they've assessed more than just the OCR step. And if that is the case, they cannot say it's a priori non-discriminatory quite yet without providing more info/data.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]