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I believe that if a crime is sufficiently bad that we should prosecute for it, it absolutely merits the use of scarce resources. And if we can't muster up the r

I believe that if a crime is sufficiently bad that we should prosecute for it, it absolutely merits the use of scarce resources. And if we can't muster up the resources to get humans to do the investigation, accusing, trying, etc it must not be that bad of a crime. Once algorithmic prosecution is enabled, we could easily see 100x as many accusations happen. That's the blessing of automation. 100x is actually a low bar. Many automations make millions more things possible. I don't think it would be a good world with a million times as much law enforcement with basically all of it automated.

jjk166 4y ago
Again, you're fundamentally missing what I'm saying. No one is arguing that humans require too many resources. I am saying that a computer, even if it were just as resource intensive as a human program, is a fundamentally preferable option. We do not live in a world where the more crime there is the more resources are available to deal with it. If anything, reality is the opposite: there is a vicious cycle where lack of government resources leads to crime and crime decreases available resources. It's trivially simple to imagine a scenario where crime gets so bad that we stop dealing with certain violations to conserve resources to deal with bigger issues. But that's irrelevant. What matters is that each and every person involved is a potential source of issues. Anyone can be tired, or scared, or distracted, or biased. This is not due to inadequate resources, though that may exacerbate the problem. This is the human condition - we are fallible beings. And in situations like this mistakes can ruin or end lives. Humans need oversight because of this fallibility, but the overseers are likewise fallible. The larger an organization is, the more places there are for something to fall through the cracks and for a mistake to go unnoticed and unresolved. Algorithmic prosecution might make accusations 100x cheaper, but you won't have 100x more accusations because there isn't 100x more crime to accuse people of. You're not going to see a massive spike in murders or bank robberies because of this algorithm, and the crime never having occurred is a really solid alibi. Sure if it's easier to investigate crimes then maybe some of the crimes we are currently tolerating because we simply don't have the manpower to deal with them would get investigated, but if we're ignoring a crime because we think the crime is not an issue, we can certainly keep ignoring it. The difference is the choice is made by society, not forced upon it by circumstance. You fear more law enforcement because you are plainly aware of how bad current law enforcement can be. This isn't more law enforcement, this is better law enforcement.
- msandford 4y ago
  I strongly disagree that increased law enforcement capabilities will lead to ever more perfect policing. I'm pretty sure that's what you're arguing. When we switched from toll booths with people in them to automated tag reading, this increased the ability to create toll roads. By making the cost of enforcement cheaper, it's enabling. If you make the cost of law enforcement lower, that won't make law enforcement work harder at solving murders. It'll mean that whole swaths of things that previously weren't practical to police will become practical and even economic. Especially if there's an automated fining system. Computers don't fix the flaws in systems. They magnify them, by enabling those systems to be scaled way, way up.
  - jjk166 4y ago
    > I strongly disagree that increased law enforcement capabilities will lead to ever more perfect policing. I'm pretty sure that's what you're arguing. That is not what I'm arguing. I am saying that if law enforcement capabilities are separate from the safeguards against their misuse, then a cut to resources will lead to a degradation of the safeguards much faster than the capabilities. Computers aren't better because they decrease the cost of law enforcement, they are better because their safeguards can't be independently cut, at least not without substantial, coordinated, and publicly acknowledged effort. Sure they might be used to investigate more crimes, but they will investigate those additional crimes with the safeguards in place. Automating toll roads may have made it easier to create toll roads, but that hasn't lead to the mass conversion of roads to toll roads. It has eliminated the possibility of toll booth worker saying "the sign is wrong, you owe an additional $2" and pocketing the difference. Now either everyone gets charged the toll they're supposed to, or everyone is charged an incorrect amount and there is a massive public outcry leading to the error being fixed. If the police start prosecuting lots of things that were previously impractical, then either there is large public outcry and we change the laws to make legal something that never should have been illegal in the first place, or people believe it's a law that should be enforced in which case it's good that now the police are able. This is, in my opinion, a massive improvement over selectively enforcing a law against those who are too powerless in society to fight against it under the guise of "conserving resources". Computers are not scaling up the existing system, they are a fundamental change to the system. I'm the first to acknowledge that this new system will still have flaws, and sure those flaws will be magnified by scale, but they are different and in my opinion at least, much more tractable flaws.

jjk166 4y ago

Again, you're fundamentally missing what I'm saying. No one is arguing that humans require too many resources. I am saying that a computer, even if it were just as resource intensive as a human program, is a fundamentally preferable option. We do not live in a world where the more crime there is the more resources are available to deal with it. If anything, reality is the opposite: there is a vicious cycle where lack of government resources leads to crime and crime decreases available resources. It's trivially simple to imagine a scenario where crime gets so bad that we stop dealing with certain violations to conserve resources to deal with bigger issues. But that's irrelevant. What matters is that each and every person involved is a potential source of issues. Anyone can be tired, or scared, or distracted, or biased. This is not due to inadequate resources, though that may exacerbate the problem. This is the human condition - we are fallible beings. And in situations like this mistakes can ruin or end lives. Humans need oversight because of this fallibility, but the overseers are likewise fallible. The larger an organization is, the more places there are for something to fall through the cracks and for a mistake to go unnoticed and unresolved. Algorithmic prosecution might make accusations 100x cheaper, but you won't have 100x more accusations because there isn't 100x more crime to accuse people of. You're not going to see a massive spike in murders or bank robberies because of this algorithm, and the crime never having occurred is a really solid alibi. Sure if it's easier to investigate crimes then maybe some of the crimes we are currently tolerating because we simply don't have the manpower to deal with them would get investigated, but if we're ignoring a crime because we think the crime is not an issue, we can certainly keep ignoring it. The difference is the choice is made by society, not forced upon it by circumstance. You fear more law enforcement because you are plainly aware of how bad current law enforcement can be. This isn't more law enforcement, this is better law enforcement.

msandford 4y ago
I strongly disagree that increased law enforcement capabilities will lead to ever more perfect policing. I'm pretty sure that's what you're arguing. When we switched from toll booths with people in them to automated tag reading, this increased the ability to create toll roads. By making the cost of enforcement cheaper, it's enabling. If you make the cost of law enforcement lower, that won't make law enforcement work harder at solving murders. It'll mean that whole swaths of things that previously weren't practical to police will become practical and even economic. Especially if there's an automated fining system. Computers don't fix the flaws in systems. They magnify them, by enabling those systems to be scaled way, way up.
- jjk166 4y ago
  > I strongly disagree that increased law enforcement capabilities will lead to ever more perfect policing. I'm pretty sure that's what you're arguing. That is not what I'm arguing. I am saying that if law enforcement capabilities are separate from the safeguards against their misuse, then a cut to resources will lead to a degradation of the safeguards much faster than the capabilities. Computers aren't better because they decrease the cost of law enforcement, they are better because their safeguards can't be independently cut, at least not without substantial, coordinated, and publicly acknowledged effort. Sure they might be used to investigate more crimes, but they will investigate those additional crimes with the safeguards in place. Automating toll roads may have made it easier to create toll roads, but that hasn't lead to the mass conversion of roads to toll roads. It has eliminated the possibility of toll booth worker saying "the sign is wrong, you owe an additional $2" and pocketing the difference. Now either everyone gets charged the toll they're supposed to, or everyone is charged an incorrect amount and there is a massive public outcry leading to the error being fixed. If the police start prosecuting lots of things that were previously impractical, then either there is large public outcry and we change the laws to make legal something that never should have been illegal in the first place, or people believe it's a law that should be enforced in which case it's good that now the police are able. This is, in my opinion, a massive improvement over selectively enforcing a law against those who are too powerless in society to fight against it under the guise of "conserving resources". Computers are not scaling up the existing system, they are a fundamental change to the system. I'm the first to acknowledge that this new system will still have flaws, and sure those flaws will be magnified by scale, but they are different and in my opinion at least, much more tractable flaws.