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According to federal data the average annual cost per prisoner in federal prisons is about $115,000. Thought experiment: Imagine that instead of that, we ident

According to federal data the average annual cost per prisoner in federal prisons is about $115,000. Thought experiment: Imagine that instead of that, we identified people likely to become criminals, using all that new fangled crime prediction AI that police forces are so excited about. Then just given them say half that amount as UBI, so $50,000/year and say you can have this as long as you don't do crime. Peoples lives improve, less crime, save money.

ok_dad 4y ago
Better yet, just give everybody a UBI sufficient for the basics, then we don't need to spend money on any newfangled AI bullshit.
- concordDance 4y ago
  This has the effect of discouraging people from working. So the question becomes how many are left who would be willing to work? And would we need a 80% tax rate on all transactions between people to fund it? And would that be a really bad idea?
  - Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
    You only get the money if you are likely to be a criminal. Since it is based on 'AI', that would mean people from poor and crime prone areas because pattern-matching. So you weren't already in that situation, then you'd have to figure out how to make your family very poor and move to a poor crime prone area. That's alot of friction for most to bother with. If everyone in that area qualifies and get the money, over time it likely that crime would decrease and economic activity would increase, school funding improves, and so on and so and eventually this place will no longer be seen by the AI to produce criminals.
    - concordDance 4y ago
      I meant the people in the crime ridden area will have that incentive. Another thing worth pointing out is this gives money to the young and the male more than anyone else. Actually, do we even need the AI? We could give every African American male between the ages of 14 and 30 who lives in a crime ridden area, has been arrested, has an absentee father and has at least one friend in prison the money... I'm not sure the more general approach wouldn't work, but "funnel a ton of money into poor crime ridden area" sounds obvious enough as a solution that its probably been tried. Anyone know what the results were? I have vague recollections that a lot of gang crime is more about subculture incentives rather than money directly. Apologies for disjointed thoughts.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - ok_dad 4y ago
    > This has the effect of discouraging people from working. Does it? I don't know that we can say it will, for sure. You're just assuming people are lazy, probably. Maybe it will discourage people from doing bullshit jobs and working on shitty advertising crapola, and instead we will have another human renaissance period of amazing things. Everyone I know, even those who aren't college educated and on the track to success since birth, would absolutely do amazing things for their communities with their time if they weren't doing stupid bullshit to enrich others.
    - concordDance 4y ago
      The ones I've talked to have said they'd probably watch TV, hang out with friends or play video games.
      - ok_dad 4y ago
        People say a lot of things. I constantly say I hate working and wish I could play vidya all day, but in reality when I'm on vacation I fucking hate it.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
  newfangled AI bullshit is a key component of the pitch. If you say you just want to help people and make the world better, there will be zero traction. But, say you have newfangled AI bullshit and now everybody is talking about it and trying to invest in newfangled AI bullshit companies and those companies then use that money on lobbyists who then 'contribute' to politicians who then pass the bills. It's not the world I want, but its the one we got.
- denton-scratch 4y ago
  > just give everybody a UBI I assumed that UBI meant Universal Basic Income; so I supposed that everybody got it. A UBI that only some people get is just some other benefit. Anyway, thanks; there were some remarks upthread about UBI that I didn't understand. Now I do.
mden 4y ago
Then you would encourage people to have behaviors that trend towards criminal so they would get paid. But I agree with the thrust of the idea - investing that money in reducing factors that would cause people to turn to crime is a good idea. I assume it's already being done but maybe not as effectively as we would hope?
- Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
  > people to have behaviors that trend towards criminal so they would get paid This won't work because newfangled AI is very smart.
concordDance 4y ago
The perverse incentives to try and behave like a potential criminal would be hilarious! Also, I think you might be missing how impulsive criminals can be... murder is often a crime of passion.
- enragedcacti 4y ago
  Even so extreme poverty is a contributing factor to how some end up in situations where the impulse is to commit a crime, even murder.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
  IMHO, it may be those impulsive murdering types are best kept in jail.
georgyo 4y ago
My first gut reaction was $115k/person/year was way too high... But apparently a person in a NYC prison costs $560k/year[1]...That amount of money can definitely do a lot of good to rehabilitate a person. However > we identified people likely to become criminals This tricky, because people will think it is GOOD to marked by the algorithm; key free money! Then these algorithm will likely be used in court as evidence that a person likely commit a crime. Sadly, this is already happening today [2] > you can have this as long as you don't do crime. So if you are convicted of a crime, in addition to all the stuff convictions currently do to prevent you from getting a job and beating any chance to better yourself besides crime, you also loose that UBI making you even MORE desperate than you were before. All you have done is increase the longer term punishment of prision. Not to mention it encourages first time convictions so the city can save money. There are many vindictive judges, who will say something like "You don't deserve the money the goverment is giving you." [1] https://comptroller.nyc.gov/newsroom/comptroller-stringer-cost-of-incarceration-per-person-in-new-york-city-skyrockets-to-all-time-high-2/ https://comptroller.nyc.gov/newsroom/comptroller-stringer-co... [2] https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/secret-algorithms-are-deciding-criminal-trials-and https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/secret-algorith...
- Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
  So its a thought experiment and so this AI is very smart, like even better than Microsoft's Tay. And maybe it not just on the person's behavior but also family wealth, living location, history, convictions of family members, and so on. Lots of things that are hard to manipulate or would take generations to do so. If you are convicted of a crime even if you had this free money, then likely you are doing crime for fun and not out of necessity, so jail is the best place for you. Cities may actually decline to convict because jailing people is more expensive, so maybe this would be a counter-effect.
  - georgyo 4y ago
    It is likely impossible for the AI to be that smart. You are talking almost about doing pre-crime. The AI could figure out you're going to murder someone before you even know yourself! But more seriously, even if the AI was super smart, it's still limited on it's inputs. The factors you listed are how the current crime AIs determine likely hood the person committed the crime. This AI is very smart and people trust it. If it says you committed the crime then you must have done it! > If you are convicted of a crime even if you had this free money, then likely you are doing crime for fun and not out of necessity, so jail is the best place for you. > Cities may actually decline to convict because jailing people is more expensive, so maybe this would be a counter-effect. These are exactly my points. Being marked by the AI gives you money, but people won't trust you. If you're on trail it's this big weight people want to hate you. The jury isn't likely getting the money, why should this person on trail get it. The judge has an incentive to incarcerate. Even as a thought experiment, this idea can not stand.
JamesBarney 4y ago
Are you using metrics that are gameable? For instance some predictors of future criminality are past criminality, and education level. This heavily incentivizes people to commit crimes and drop out of school. So you are forced to only use metrics that are outside their control such as parent's previous income level. And you'll get nowhere near a 50% false positive rate using only these metrics. Not to mention all of the frustration felt by their neighbor who is working 40 hours a week and taking home $25,000 a year, while they sit at home playing xbox for 50k a year.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
  The AI is very smart and can't be gamed. It's a thought experiment, the AI is amazingly accurate. That neighbor earning $25k a year would rightfully be upset, minimum wage is a joke.
  - JamesBarney 4y ago
    If we had some super AI that couldn't get gamed, yes it would make sense at least from a financial standpoint. But once we have a singularity Also we don't produce enough goods in the economy to make a 50k UBI possible.
- Spivak 4y ago
  > their neighbor who is working 40 hours a week and taking home $25,000 a year, while they sit at home playing xbox for 50k a year And they wouldn't be mad that inmates are getting $100k/yr in court mandated housing services sitting in a cell doing nothing because for some insane reason we decided that it's a good use of our money and their time? Does it suddenly make it okay as long as they're suffering while they do it?
  - lelanthran 4y ago
    > Does it suddenly make it okay as long as they're suffering while they do it? Yes. What a stupid question, of course people would rather pay money to punish criminals than to pay that money to have them play videogames. You might argue that people shouldn't think that way, but not only do all apes have a sense of fairness, almost all other semi intelligent creatures do too. Asking people to go go against a built-in drive is like asking teenagers to practice abstinence.
ActorNightly 4y ago
You would get rid of a small percentage of crime. A lot of crime happens out of either cultural ideals, or inability to control emotions. My opinion is that the money should be spent on labor camps, specifically towards guaranteeing good nutrition, secure housing, access to medicine, with oversight on a government level, but everyone is forced to work. You would solve for things like inner prison violence/drug trade, since people will be physically and mentally exhausted, and best of all, everyone finishing their sentences will have had a good number of years of blue collar work. If some dude spent 5 years every day welding up structures for solar panels, I guarantee you companies are gonna want to interview him to make use of his skills.

ok_dad 4y ago

Better yet, just give everybody a UBI sufficient for the basics, then we don't need to spend money on any newfangled AI bullshit.

concordDance 4y ago
This has the effect of discouraging people from working. So the question becomes how many are left who would be willing to work? And would we need a 80% tax rate on all transactions between people to fund it? And would that be a really bad idea?
- Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
  You only get the money if you are likely to be a criminal. Since it is based on 'AI', that would mean people from poor and crime prone areas because pattern-matching. So you weren't already in that situation, then you'd have to figure out how to make your family very poor and move to a poor crime prone area. That's alot of friction for most to bother with. If everyone in that area qualifies and get the money, over time it likely that crime would decrease and economic activity would increase, school funding improves, and so on and so and eventually this place will no longer be seen by the AI to produce criminals.
  - concordDance 4y ago
    I meant the people in the crime ridden area will have that incentive. Another thing worth pointing out is this gives money to the young and the male more than anyone else. Actually, do we even need the AI? We could give every African American male between the ages of 14 and 30 who lives in a crime ridden area, has been arrested, has an absentee father and has at least one friend in prison the money... I'm not sure the more general approach wouldn't work, but "funnel a ton of money into poor crime ridden area" sounds obvious enough as a solution that its probably been tried. Anyone know what the results were? I have vague recollections that a lot of gang crime is more about subculture incentives rather than money directly. Apologies for disjointed thoughts.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- ok_dad 4y ago
  > This has the effect of discouraging people from working. Does it? I don't know that we can say it will, for sure. You're just assuming people are lazy, probably. Maybe it will discourage people from doing bullshit jobs and working on shitty advertising crapola, and instead we will have another human renaissance period of amazing things. Everyone I know, even those who aren't college educated and on the track to success since birth, would absolutely do amazing things for their communities with their time if they weren't doing stupid bullshit to enrich others.
  - concordDance 4y ago
    The ones I've talked to have said they'd probably watch TV, hang out with friends or play video games.
    - ok_dad 4y ago
      People say a lot of things. I constantly say I hate working and wish I could play vidya all day, but in reality when I'm on vacation I fucking hate it.
Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
newfangled AI bullshit is a key component of the pitch. If you say you just want to help people and make the world better, there will be zero traction. But, say you have newfangled AI bullshit and now everybody is talking about it and trying to invest in newfangled AI bullshit companies and those companies then use that money on lobbyists who then 'contribute' to politicians who then pass the bills. It's not the world I want, but its the one we got.
denton-scratch 4y ago
> just give everybody a UBI I assumed that UBI meant Universal Basic Income; so I supposed that everybody got it. A UBI that only some people get is just some other benefit. Anyway, thanks; there were some remarks upthread about UBI that I didn't understand. Now I do.

mden 4y ago

Then you would encourage people to have behaviors that trend towards criminal so they would get paid. But I agree with the thrust of the idea - investing that money in reducing factors that would cause people to turn to crime is a good idea. I assume it's already being done but maybe not as effectively as we would hope?

Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
> people to have behaviors that trend towards criminal so they would get paid This won't work because newfangled AI is very smart.

concordDance 4y ago

The perverse incentives to try and behave like a potential criminal would be hilarious! Also, I think you might be missing how impulsive criminals can be... murder is often a crime of passion.

enragedcacti 4y ago
Even so extreme poverty is a contributing factor to how some end up in situations where the impulse is to commit a crime, even murder.
Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
IMHO, it may be those impulsive murdering types are best kept in jail.

georgyo 4y ago

My first gut reaction was $115k/person/year was way too high... But apparently a person in a NYC prison costs $560k/year[1]...That amount of money can definitely do a lot of good to rehabilitate a person. However > we identified people likely to become criminals This tricky, because people will think it is GOOD to marked by the algorithm; key free money! Then these algorithm will likely be used in court as evidence that a person likely commit a crime. Sadly, this is already happening today [2] > you can have this as long as you don't do crime. So if you are convicted of a crime, in addition to all the stuff convictions currently do to prevent you from getting a job and beating any chance to better yourself besides crime, you also loose that UBI making you even MORE desperate than you were before. All you have done is increase the longer term punishment of prision. Not to mention it encourages first time convictions so the city can save money. There are many vindictive judges, who will say something like "You don't deserve the money the goverment is giving you." [1] https://comptroller.nyc.gov/newsroom/comptroller-stringer-cost-of-incarceration-per-person-in-new-york-city-skyrockets-to-all-time-high-2/ https://comptroller.nyc.gov/newsroom/comptroller-stringer-co... [2] https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/secret-algorithms-are-deciding-criminal-trials-and https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/secret-algorith...

Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
So its a thought experiment and so this AI is very smart, like even better than Microsoft's Tay. And maybe it not just on the person's behavior but also family wealth, living location, history, convictions of family members, and so on. Lots of things that are hard to manipulate or would take generations to do so. If you are convicted of a crime even if you had this free money, then likely you are doing crime for fun and not out of necessity, so jail is the best place for you. Cities may actually decline to convict because jailing people is more expensive, so maybe this would be a counter-effect.
- georgyo 4y ago
  It is likely impossible for the AI to be that smart. You are talking almost about doing pre-crime. The AI could figure out you're going to murder someone before you even know yourself! But more seriously, even if the AI was super smart, it's still limited on it's inputs. The factors you listed are how the current crime AIs determine likely hood the person committed the crime. This AI is very smart and people trust it. If it says you committed the crime then you must have done it! > If you are convicted of a crime even if you had this free money, then likely you are doing crime for fun and not out of necessity, so jail is the best place for you. > Cities may actually decline to convict because jailing people is more expensive, so maybe this would be a counter-effect. These are exactly my points. Being marked by the AI gives you money, but people won't trust you. If you're on trail it's this big weight people want to hate you. The jury isn't likely getting the money, why should this person on trail get it. The judge has an incentive to incarcerate. Even as a thought experiment, this idea can not stand.

JamesBarney 4y ago

Are you using metrics that are gameable? For instance some predictors of future criminality are past criminality, and education level. This heavily incentivizes people to commit crimes and drop out of school. So you are forced to only use metrics that are outside their control such as parent's previous income level. And you'll get nowhere near a 50% false positive rate using only these metrics. Not to mention all of the frustration felt by their neighbor who is working 40 hours a week and taking home $25,000 a year, while they sit at home playing xbox for 50k a year.

Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
The AI is very smart and can't be gamed. It's a thought experiment, the AI is amazingly accurate. That neighbor earning $25k a year would rightfully be upset, minimum wage is a joke.
- JamesBarney 4y ago
  If we had some super AI that couldn't get gamed, yes it would make sense at least from a financial standpoint. But once we have a singularity Also we don't produce enough goods in the economy to make a 50k UBI possible.
Spivak 4y ago
> their neighbor who is working 40 hours a week and taking home $25,000 a year, while they sit at home playing xbox for 50k a year And they wouldn't be mad that inmates are getting $100k/yr in court mandated housing services sitting in a cell doing nothing because for some insane reason we decided that it's a good use of our money and their time? Does it suddenly make it okay as long as they're suffering while they do it?
- lelanthran 4y ago
  > Does it suddenly make it okay as long as they're suffering while they do it? Yes. What a stupid question, of course people would rather pay money to punish criminals than to pay that money to have them play videogames. You might argue that people shouldn't think that way, but not only do all apes have a sense of fairness, almost all other semi intelligent creatures do too. Asking people to go go against a built-in drive is like asking teenagers to practice abstinence.

ActorNightly 4y ago

You would get rid of a small percentage of crime. A lot of crime happens out of either cultural ideals, or inability to control emotions. My opinion is that the money should be spent on labor camps, specifically towards guaranteeing good nutrition, secure housing, access to medicine, with oversight on a government level, but everyone is forced to work. You would solve for things like inner prison violence/drug trade, since people will be physically and mentally exhausted, and best of all, everyone finishing their sentences will have had a good number of years of blue collar work. If some dude spent 5 years every day welding up structures for solar panels, I guarantee you companies are gonna want to interview him to make use of his skills.