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AI is Sending People To Jail -- and Getting it Wrong (technologyreview.com)
At the Data for Black Lives conference last weekend, technologists, legal experts, and community activists snapped the kind of impact AI has on our lives into perspective with a discussion of America's criminal justice system. There, an algorithm can determine the trajectory of your life.
From a report: The US imprisons more people than any other country in the world. At the end of 2016, nearly 2.2 million adults were being held in prisons or jails, and an additional 4.5 million were in other correctional facilities. Put another way, 1 in 38 adult Americans was under some form of correctional supervision. The nightmarishness of this situation is one of the few issues that unite politicians on both sides of the aisle.
Under immense pressure to reduce prison numbers without risking a rise in crime, courtrooms across the US have turned to automated tools in attempts to shuffle defendants through the legal system as efficiently and safely as possible. This is where the AI part of our story begins. Police departments use predictive algorithms to strategize about where to send their ranks. Law enforcement agencies use face recognition systems to help identify suspects. These practices have garnered well-deserved scrutiny for whether they in fact improve safety or simply perpetuate existing inequities.
Researchers and civil rights advocates, for example, have repeatedly demonstrated that face recognition systems can fail spectacularly, particularly for dark-skinned individuals -- even mistaking members of Congress for convicted criminals. But the most controversial tool by far comes after police have made an arrest. Say hello to criminal risk assessment algorithms.
Under immense pressure to reduce prison numbers without risking a rise in crime, courtrooms across the US have turned to automated tools in attempts to shuffle defendants through the legal system as efficiently and safely as possible. This is where the AI part of our story begins. Police departments use predictive algorithms to strategize about where to send their ranks. Law enforcement agencies use face recognition systems to help identify suspects. These practices have garnered well-deserved scrutiny for whether they in fact improve safety or simply perpetuate existing inequities.
Researchers and civil rights advocates, for example, have repeatedly demonstrated that face recognition systems can fail spectacularly, particularly for dark-skinned individuals -- even mistaking members of Congress for convicted criminals. But the most controversial tool by far comes after police have made an arrest. Say hello to criminal risk assessment algorithms.
People want a perfect world. People don't know history and how far humanity has come. People complain about modern life like we live in 1850. People should continue to work to fix things - but the constantly bitching , finger pointing and dividing of people into groups *does not help*.
Algorithms and bad statistics are not artificial intelligence. People using algorithms and bad statistics in idiotic ways is also not ai. Words mean things. Use them with care and precision.
quote: even mistaking members of Congress for convicted criminals
If there ever was a non-mistake, that would be it.
The most blatant statistic that shows cultural racism is the crime clearance rate by race of the victim.
The computer should send many more cops into 'communities of color', not doing so is racist!
They aren't getting their 'fair share' of law enforcement, as seen by the fact that blacks are shot at a lower rate than their share of crime committed. Until 40%+ of those shot by cops are black, they aren't being treated fairly.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Because most risk assessment algorithms are proprietary, it’s also impossible to interrogate their decisions or hold them accountable.
You can't have secret laws, or secret government. Government and criminal justice must have the ability to scrutinize the decisions, and you can't scrutinize a secret algorithm.
This is the same thing that's happened with blood alcohol testing machines. Courts have ruled they have to allow scrutiny of the source code. The same should happen for these algorithms.
The next step is to simply decide which data is legal to make decisions on. You can't use race, but I bet you a lot of money they use where you live, and income levels. Discriminating on either of those isn't just a matter of racism, it's just not right to ding people because they're poor, or live in a poor neighborhood.
The data that gets used should be things more in peoples direct control. Like the crime committed, the number of other crimes you've been convicted of, etc.
The United States doesn't a a Justice system, but a punishment system.
It is running off the Old Idea. If we treat the population like pre-teen kids, where punishment is an effective way to curve behavior, and prevent this from happening.
Now lets not straw man this, and talk about murderers, and the harden criminals, where harsher sentence are needed.
Most Americans Jailed are for lower level crimes, crimes of passion, or crimes because they couldn't find an effective legal way out.
The cost of keep these people in jail, is often far more then their hindrance too society that they caused.
We can be tough on crime, without jailing everyone. Jailing should be used only if the criminal is considered too much of a risk to the general public. They are other ways to punish and rehabilitate criminals. Such as Home Confinement or Monitored Home Confinement, where the criminal can still go to work, and live their life, but just cannot travel anywhere he wants and when. Giving them a life, while making sure they don't go out of bounds. There is also just general relocation, sometimes the criminal causes crime, because they are living in a place that fosters such activity. Then there should be more effort in educations, and showing people a better way out.
People shouldn't be able to get away with criminal activity. But just locking them up isn't justice. It is just being cruel, and wanting revenge for their damage.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Long story short, don't do things that get you in the legal system in the first place.
Why do people insist on calling Expert Systems "AI"? These programs didn't figure out the rules themselves, they were programmed with an explicit set of rules by so-called "experts" who had all their own built-in biases!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
We should be comparing how good the AI is against what it would be replacing. We know that a computer won't be perfect, but it's pretty damned obvious that humans are far off mark as well. Human witnesses are also terrible at facial recognition as evidence by the number of wrongful incarcerations. There's one particular case, where an expert on eyewitness testimony was accused of a rape and picked out of a lineup by the victim, but was at the time of the crime on television, where he was talking about the unreliability of eyewitness testimony of all things.
At least with a computer, we'll be properly skeptical of it. With humans, we're too susceptible to being drawn in to what they say (regardless of whether they're genuinely mistaken or willfully deceptive) and people will continue to maintain some false recollection, even if they're not being malicious, long after other evidence should be sufficient to dismiss it. Worse still, other humans tend to gravitate towards whatever they've heard from someone else first and weight it disproportionately to information they receive later. That can still happen when interacting with computers, but I don't believe that we assign them the same amount of trust.
All your insurance is based on statistical risk assessment too... is it all invalid? Should you be in the same risk pool as alcoholics and meth users?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I have been at the receiving end of these. They are far simpler and more biased than anyone would reasonably expect. They are likely the result of a self-styled 'expert', as they are certainly never vetted in any academic sense, and they show a lot of that person/teams biases. They put the vast majority of the weighting on income and upbringing, meaning a minor non-violent criminal with a background of childhood poverty will be treated as much larger threat than a wealthy murderer. Just for a bit of background, I shot someone. I have no delusions that the money and privilege of being a white professional with a lawyer changed my outcome in the courtroom and DA negotiation side. Were I poor and minority I likely would have been in the system for life. But beyond that, once into the system, the imbalance continued. On a threat scale of 0 to 100, I rated something like a 2. It was absurd. Mainly because the questions were weighted toward things like how long I had been at an address, and if I owned or rented. Also previous convictions REGARDLESS OF TYPE. I knocked all those questions out of the park. If some poor minority kid with little education and a few tickets and a minimum wage job who had recently changed apartments got caught with a joint, they would have scored something like at least a 50 as a baseline. Which means I got an immediate and almost unsupervised walk (not a day in jail, call in once a month), while our hypothetical joint owner would have been locked up with at least a medium threat rating. TL,DR; This has nothing to do with AI, more what some white, educated social worker pulled from very flawed data filtered through their biases.
"even mistaking members of Congress for convicted criminals"
That's easy. Just teach it to distinguish between convicted and unconvicted criminals.
When "blacks" stop doing culturally stupid shit like committing acts of violence then they wont be in jail. Stop judging them on their skin color and judge them based on their actions. And most importantly, don't give anyone a pass/handycap based on race; for that in of itself is racism!
Life is not for the lazy.
Private prisons account for less than 10% of the overall prison population. We've had this problem far longer than we've had private prisons. It might be trendy to hate on companies, but they're hardly the only interested parties in keeping people locked up for silly reasons.
The rise in private prisons has merely been a direct result of the government owned facilities getting overcrowded and the inability for states to secure funding to build additional prisons. Of course these private prisons want guaranteed minimum occupancy rates so there's further incentive for the state to keep locking people up. There've even been a few stories of judges getting kickbacks, so the whole system is pretty much a racket.
I suspect that with marijuana being legalized in more and more states, we'll start to see a sharp decline in prison population. There are a sizable group of prisoners who are there for no other reason than possessing slightly too much of a particular plant or other substance. We're wasting a lot of money locking up people who could otherwise be paying taxes.
There are a sizable group of prisoners who are there for no other reason than possessing slightly too much of a particular plant or other substance. We're wasting a lot of money locking up people who could otherwise be paying taxes.
Especially if marijuana is legalized and taxed!
Quoting the Slashdot story summary: "The US imprisons more people than any other country in the world."
It is more correct to say, "The US imprisons a higher percentage of its people than any other country in the world."
Either is correct. America is the world leader both in percent and absolute number of prisoners. China is the only other country that even comes close. China imprisons about a quarter as many people as a percentage, but even if you include the "re-education" camps in Xinjiang they are still below America in absolute numbers.
Prison is a big, profitable business in the United States. The companies that manage prisons are paid up to $70,000 per prisoner, per year.
Private prisons are a problem, and in my opinion should be shut down. But prison unions in government run prisons are also a big problem. The California prison union was a big financial supporter of the "three strikes" law that caused prison populations to soar, locking up thousands of non-violent geriatric geezers that should be in nursing homes instead of prison cells.
Private prisons and prison unions both work to not only lock up more offenders and lengthen sentences, but also to increase recidivism. It is well known that prisoners that keep in touch with their families and friends are more likely to successfully reintegrate with society. So the prisons actively work to prevent that, by moving prisoners out-of-state, denying visits for capricious reasons, and making phone calls expensive and infrequent.
It is a rotten corrupt process, and we all pay the price.
One important missing part of the story is how does the decision-making of algorithms fare against decision-making of humans?
Just like self-driving cars, the important thing for law enforcement AI isn't the absolute rate of errors in judgement, it's the relative rate of errors compared to humans making those decisions. Human decision making is far from perfect, so we shouldn't throw out algorithmic tools completely because they don't end up magically being correct 100% of the time. They just have to be at least 1% more consistent than we are to be of overall benefit. Remember, the goal here is to *reduce* the prison population through the use of AI. Less people will end up in prison due to the algorithms than would otherwise be there. Sure, it will make some mistakes, but overall, less people will be in prison compared to the human-judgement based system, because that is the metric the AIs are being trained to improve. If the prison population drops by 30% due to AI optimization, then that means a LOT less black people in prison, so even if the percentage error rate was a bit higher, less black people would be negatively impacted.
Put another way, 1 in 38 adult Americans was under some form of correctional supervision.
All victimless crimes need to be removed from the books. If someone wants to smoke pot, do coke, or what ever, let them. But also spend money on better education. Work on the root cause of why this is the case. Obviously there are some people who are going to waste their life. But it's a hell of a lot less than the wasted lives we have with people in prison, or who get out and will never be able to find a meaningful job afterward. Tax drugs and use the money to help people too. This eliminates the money made by current criminals in the drug trade as well.
If someone is publicly intoxicated, who cares. If they are making a nuisance of themselves, put them in a drunk tank until they sober up the next day. Just because someone is staggering a bit on the way home from the bar, who cares. Why is this something that can get a person prison time? If they are being belligerent or threatening others, that's a different case. But that's illegal even if you are sober.
Prostitution is another case. As long as it's a persons choice and they are not being forced into it, why is this a crime. Pimps should be punished for sure. But if someone wants to work for a prostitute, or group of them for an agreed upon amount/percentage I don't see the issue. At least as long as it's understood that the prostitute is in charge and not the other way around. Again, taxes and education should get funding from this. As well as testing.
While I don't necessarily agree with copyright infringement, it is not a criminal offense. This is a civil matter. But copyright law is such a mess in this county, I don't think it will be fixed in my lifetime. But no one should ever go to jail for downloading music or video. If a person gets caught for it, then they should not have to pay any more than the cost of what it would be to purchase the track on iTunes or similar service. $400,000 for one song is insane.
Some crimes should also be judged on the circumstance as well. If someone gets pulled over for a DUI, maybe we shouldn't have the criminal justice system destroy their life. But make the punishment for a second offense much stricter. Granted, the possibility of an innocent bystander getting harmed could go up too. So this might not be the best example.
The criminal justice system is in place to protect the citizenry, not enslave it. If 1 in 38 adults are somehow in the system, then something is obviously very wrong. The laws are in place to help protect the people, not enslave them. Our system of government was supposed to be for the people. The rich and corporations should not be able to purchase politicians either. When someone does more time for a joint than stealing a couple million from a pension fund, something is very wrong.
Of course they are leaving details out. Because the details about what happened wouldn't contribute any more toward their argument. By their own admission, GP did something worse than get "caught with a joint" and yet their punishment was much less severe than that hypothetical kid would have received for a much lesser infraction. I assume by the way they worded their post that GP was able to enter a plea deal, which is an opportunity that might be denied to someone who is determined by an algorithm to be more of a "risk" - and that's exactly the issue at hand.
Note that TFA uses language such as "defendant" and not "convicted criminal"; the problem is that one does not have to be convicted of a crime to have their life ruined. Actually, one doesn't even have to be charged with a crime. Imagine a scenario where someone is detained for a day or two then released without being charged with any crime, because an algorithm decides that they might be a risk, and in the meantime because they don't show up to work they lose their job. Whereas if another person, say someone charged with a crime, is let go within a very short timeframe on promise of making a phone call the next morning, or is allowed to post bail while awaiting trial, they might not suffer any major life interruption.
The US imprisons more people than any other country in the world.
Is this because:
1. The US are better at catching criminals?
2. There are more criminals per capita in the US? (I assume that the careless quote is meant per capita).
3. The US imprisons more innocent people?
4. There are more actions that are deemed illegal in the US than elsewhere?
5. It is profitable to run prisons.
6. ???
One thing is that roughly 25 percent of the US prison population is certifiably insane.
In the 1950s we had about 500,000 people in mental asylums in the US.
Today, with double the population, we have about 50,000 people in asylums.
The consequences are in our public parks and in our prisons.
Consider, I'm talking about roughly .3% of the US population here. Would you believe that .3% of the US population is medically insane? Of course. In fact, the actual number if probably a bit higher. But we can at least accept .3%. That is 1 million people.
We need to reconsider "de-institutionalization" which was a push after the 1960s and finally finished in the 1990s.
Look at most of the mass shootings... Nearly all of them are known mental health risks with records of mental illness.
Look at the prisons and consider what filling 25% of the seats in the prison with the certifiably insane does to the internal prison culture? Think about that. Imagine warehoused hardened criminals being mixed with people that don't know which way is up or down.
Look at our streets, our public parks, etc... look at those people and tell me honestly if you can say "that could be me". Because it couldn't. You're looking at substance abuse and mental illness almost entirely. If were economic, then people wouldn't be coming from Guatemala to work and then send money BACK to Guatemala.
If you want to seriously deal with the US prison problem, then you have to first have the courage to admit that it was used as a dumping ground for the people that were de-institutionalized.
Any attempt to deal with the prisons without examining that with eyes wide open... is going to fail.
You can talk about computer algorithms or procedures until the stars burn cold. Actually look into what the prison population is at this point and how it has changed. The increase in US prison populations had two things happen at the same time.
1. The Drug war. Everyone knows about this and it has been discussed to death.
2. And this is masked by the drug war and in part because many people don't know anything about it... De-institutionalization. They happened at the SAME time. So the numbers don't point to one or the other. They just show an increase at time X.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
It is well known that prisoners that keep in touch with their families and friends are more likely to successfully reintegrate with society.
Interesting. I once heard here that recidivism is lower in Nordic countries which relocate convicts, upon release, to a location far from where they used to live. The theory was that if they're separated from their old criminal friends and contacts then they're less likely to reoffend.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Interesting. I once heard here that recidivism is lower in Nordic countries which relocate convicts, upon release, to a location far from where they used to live. The theory was that if they're separated from their old criminal friends and contacts then they're less likely to reoffend.
I just did some googling, and was unable to find a single citation for any Nordic country doing this. To the contrary, as an inmate nears release, Norway offers weekend releases to ease the reintegration with their family and community.
HornWumpus's post went right over your head AC. If there was an overall larger police presence in the neighborhoods that had higher crime rates, the crime rate would go down. The streets would be safer for everyone but the gangs running the place. Parents don't want their children getting show while walking home from school because a bunch of gang members are shooting at each other.
Hence his point is, not doing more to help the communities that need help is in fact racist. More police would let the mostly non-criminal element go about their business instead of being victims because the cops won't go to that area.