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In any system, there are false positives and false negatives. In some situations (like a high recall disease detection) false negatives are much worse than fals
by janalsncm 1y ago
In any system, there are false positives and false negatives. In some situations (like a high recall disease detection) false negatives are much worse than false positives, because the cost of a false positive is a more rigorous screening.
But in this case both are bad. If it was a false negative students might need therapy for a more tragic reason.
Aside from improving the quality of the detection model, we should try to reduce the “cost” of both failure modes as much as possible. Putting a human in the loop or having secondary checks are ways to do that.
- nkrisc 1y agoIn this case false positives are far, far worse than false negatives. A false negative in this system does not mean a tragedy will occur, because there are many other preventative measures in place. And never mind the fact that this country refuses to even address the primary cause of gun violence in the first place: the ubiquity of guns in our society. So systems like this is what we end up with when we ignore to address the problem of guns and choose to deal the downstream effects of that instead.
- Lammy 1y ago> the primary cause of gun violence in the first place: the ubiquity of guns in our society I would have gone with “a normalized sense of hopelessness and indignity which causes people to feel like violence is the only way they can have any agency in life” considering “gun” is the adjective and “violence” is the actual thing you're talking about.
- pixelready 1y agoBoth are true. The underlying oppressive, lonely, pro-bullying culture creates the tension. The proliferation of high lethality weapons makes it more likely that tension will eventually release in the form of a mass tragedy. Improvement in either area would be a net positive for society. Improvement in both areas is ideal but solving proliferation seems a lot more straightforward than fixing the generally miserable society problem.
- Aeolun 1y agoI think there’s probably some correlation between ‘generally miserable society’ and ‘we think it’s ok to have children surveiled by AI’
- Aeolun 1y agoI tend to categorize these under a dutch idiom which I can’t describe, but which is abundantly clear in pictorial form: https://klimapedia.nl/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Dweilen_met_de_kraan_open_A5.png https://klimapedia.nl/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Dweilen_met...
- garblegarble 1y ago"Treating the symptoms not the cause" would be the english equivalent. (for others: the Dutch expression is "Dweilen met de kraan open", "Mopping with the tap open")
- janalsncm 1y agoTo be clear, the false negative here would be a student who has brought a gun to a school and the computer ignores it. That is a situation where potentially multiple people can be killed in a short amount of time. It is not far, far worse to send cops.
- krferriter 1y agoDepends on the false positive rate doesn't it. If police are being sent to storm a school every week due to a false positive, that is quite bad. And people will become conditioned to not care about reports of a gun at a school because of all the false positives.
- janalsncm 1y agoFor what I’m saying, no it doesn’t because I’m just comparing a single instance of false positive to a single instance of false negative. Neither is desirable.
- lelandfe 1y agoI was swatted once. Girlfriend's house. Someone called 911 and said they'd seen me kill a neighbor, drag their body into the house, and was now holding my gf's family hostage. We answered the screams at the door to guns pointed at our faces, and countless cops. It was explained to us that this was the restrained version. We got a knock. Unfortunately, I understand why these responses can't be neutered too much. You just never know.
- collingreen 1y agoIn this case, though, you COULD know, COULD verify with a human before pointing guns at people, or COULD not deploy a half finished product in a way that prioritizes your profit over public safety.
- rubyfan 1y agos/COULD/SHOULD/g
- SoftTalker 1y agoDo the cops not ever get tired of being fooled like this? Or do they just enjoy the chance to go out in their army-surplus armored cars and pretend to be special forces?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- adaml_623 1y agoThis is a really good question. Sadly the answer is that they think it's how the system is meant to work. Well that seems to be the answer that I see coming from police spokespeople
- MisterTea 1y agoIts likely procedure that they have to follow (see my other post in this thread.) I hate to say this but I get it. Imagine a scenario happens where they decide "sounds phony. stand down." only for it to be real and people are hurt/killed because the "cops ignored our pleas for help and did nothing." which would be a horrible mistake they could be liable for, never mind the media circus and PR damage. So they treat all scenarios as real and figure it out after they knock/kick in the door.
- trehalose 1y agoFalse positives can effectively lead to false negatives too. If too many alarms end in teens getting swatted (or worse) for eating chips, people might ignore the alarm if an actual school shooter triggers it. Might assume the AI is just screaming about a bag of chips again.
- tacticus 1y ago> But in this case both are bad. If it was a false negative students might need therapy for a more tragic reason. Given the probability of police officers in the USA taking any action as hostile and then ending up shooting him a false positive here is the same as swatting someone. The system here sent the police off to kill someone.
- janalsncm 1y agoSure. But school shootings are also common in the US. A student who has brought a gun to a school is very likely not harmless. So false negatives aren’t free either.
- pbhjpbhj 1y agoWhat's the proportion of gun-carrying to shooting in schools?
- janalsncm 1y agoWell guns aren’t allowed in schools at all. It’s a felony. So if your point is that the ratio is low, that’s only because the denominator is way too big.
- pbhjpbhj 1y agoNo point, a question. I'd suspect kids would take guns to 'be cool', show friends, make threats without intention to actually use them. Also, intention to harm that wasn't followed through; intention to defend themselves if threatened; other reasons? Probably no sound stats, but I'm curious about it, so asked.
- potato3732842 1y agoConsidering the slices of the socioeconomic ladder mostly involved here, I'd bet that "it won't grow legs if it's on me" dwarfs all other motives for bringing guns to school.
- Spooky23 1y agoI think a “true positive” is an issue as well if the protocol to manage it isn’t appropriate. If the kid was armed with something other than nacho cheese, the provocative reaction could have easily set off a tragic chain of events. Reality is there are guns in schools every day. “Solutions” like this aren’t making anyone safer. School shooters don’t fit this profile - they are planners, not impulsive people hanging out at the social event. More disturbing is the meh attitude of both the company and the school administration. They almost engineered a tragedy through incompetence, and learned nothing.