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I think it's a matter of accuracy and bias. If the tech keeps making false accusations, especially against the same kind of people over and over, then a ban mig

I think it's a matter of accuracy and bias. If the tech keeps making false accusations, especially against the same kind of people over and over, then a ban might be in place. You could argue that humans make similar mistakes and bias, but the scale is always smaller when humans are involved, just because of how slow they are. Say a model is wrong 37% of the time, and so are humans, but the model runs 1000 times a minute, where as humans perform the task 10 times a minute. That means the model makes 370 false accusations a minute, where a human makes only 3 a minute. In effect, the number of people you bothered falsely accusing is still less when done manually, simply because it can't scale. Lastly, there's an argument that the police shouldn't be too efficient, because some crimes might be better off existing in a grey area. People do fear police supremacy and police states, the idea that they can find you for j-walking or jumping a fence as a dare, etc. Or that the state could become authoritarian, but you'd have no way to fight back as rebels due to advance tech of surveillance the police would have, etc. I'm not saying those are justified, but I think it plays into it, people are fine saying that only the highest risk cases are worth pursuing, but if a tech comes along that lets police pursue all cases, it might start to feel abusive to people. P.S.: I'm neither against nor in support of a ban here, I'm still making up my mind, just answering some of the reasons I know off for being for the ban.

kenjackson 5y ago
> I think it's a matter of accuracy and bias. If the tech keeps making false accusations, especially against the same kind of people over and over, then a ban might be in place. It seems like we should then ban eyewitness testimony. That has tons of accuracy issues and bias.
- SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago
  Please read the full post. The issue is inaccuracy and scale.
  - kenjackson 5y ago
    The scale is a complete strawman. They aren’t falsely accusing 300 people for a crime. A great example is the Capitol Riots. They are narrowing the list down to manageable numbers. They aren’t suddenly arresting thousands of people for a crime committed by three.
Manuel_D 5y ago
Is facial recognition more biased than manually comparing against mugshots? A lot of people seem to be writing under the impression that if facial recognition software is banned, police and government won't use facial recognition. The reality is that they will still use facial recognition, just in the old fashioned way by looking at suspects and looking at mugshots. And humans are often biased, too.
- bobthepanda 5y ago
  The problem is that jurors place higher faith in technology than they do in people, and that’s not necessarily warranted. It’s one of the things swept under the umbrella of the “CSI effect.”
Manuel_D 5y ago
> Say a model is wrong 37% of the time, and so are humans, but the model runs 1000 times a minute, where as humans perform the task 10 times a minute. That means the model makes 370 false accusations a minute, where a human makes only 3 a minute. Or they spend 100x as many man-hours and achieve the same number of false accusations, but at a much higher cost to the taxpayers.

kenjackson 5y ago

> I think it's a matter of accuracy and bias. If the tech keeps making false accusations, especially against the same kind of people over and over, then a ban might be in place. It seems like we should then ban eyewitness testimony. That has tons of accuracy issues and bias.

SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago
Please read the full post. The issue is inaccuracy and scale.
- kenjackson 5y ago
  The scale is a complete strawman. They aren’t falsely accusing 300 people for a crime. A great example is the Capitol Riots. They are narrowing the list down to manageable numbers. They aren’t suddenly arresting thousands of people for a crime committed by three.

Manuel_D 5y ago

Is facial recognition more biased than manually comparing against mugshots? A lot of people seem to be writing under the impression that if facial recognition software is banned, police and government won't use facial recognition. The reality is that they will still use facial recognition, just in the old fashioned way by looking at suspects and looking at mugshots. And humans are often biased, too.

bobthepanda 5y ago
The problem is that jurors place higher faith in technology than they do in people, and that’s not necessarily warranted. It’s one of the things swept under the umbrella of the “CSI effect.”

Manuel_D 5y ago

> Say a model is wrong 37% of the time, and so are humans, but the model runs 1000 times a minute, where as humans perform the task 10 times a minute. That means the model makes 370 false accusations a minute, where a human makes only 3 a minute. Or they spend 100x as many man-hours and achieve the same number of false accusations, but at a much higher cost to the taxpayers.