Slashdot Mirror
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
no, the point of the article is that algorithm training usually carries the implicit assumption that the data used to train is good, in all important ways, but the history of law enforcement has not always been fair, and that causes problems with the algorithm's outputs.
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.
If nobody calls out things that are broken, how the hell will they get fixed? Who the hell needs these newfangled electric lights anyway. Quit your bitching about oil lamps.