<story><title>A man spent a year in jail on murder charge that hinged on disputed AI evidence</title><url>https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/22/in_brief_ai/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>yawaworht1978</author><text>Wow i have never heard of that. Curious to see a link&amp;#x2F;article on the issue, if you can provide.</text></item><item><author>SamoyedFurFluff</author><text>I mean, drug dogs are still a thing even though we know they tend to respond to owners desires regardless of if there’s drugs present.</text></item><item><author>helsinkiandrew</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s scary that prosecutors thought that the ShotSpotter evidence is suitable for a court.  It&amp;#x27;s amazing technology that can help police get to a crime scene quickly but is far too easy to spoof or get the wrong answer due to reflections and other sounds etc.&lt;p&gt;Hopefully cases like this will eventually stop the system being used in court.</text></item><item><author>PragmaticPulp</author><text>The article says that employees of the AI company (ShotSpotter) manually reviewed and classified the sounds as gunshots:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; records showed that ShotSpotter actually initially picked up what sounded like a firework a mile away, and this was later reclassified by ShotSpotter staff to be a gunshot at the intersection where and when Williams was seen on camera.&lt;p&gt;So the AI didn’t even make the call. The staff did, manually. I assume that means the actual audio is available and entered into evidence?&lt;p&gt;If humans are making the call then blaming AI seems like a stretch. That’s almost like blaming the motion detection algorithms for triggering video recordings that were later reviewed by humans. It’s still humans reviewing the recordings and making decisions.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>DaftDank</author><text>This is a decent summary of court cases related to the dogs: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nlrg.com&amp;#x2F;criminal-law-legal-research&amp;#x2F;bid&amp;#x2F;84670&amp;#x2F;CRIMINAL-LAW-UPDATE-Reliability-of-Narcotics-Dogs-to-Be-Revisited-by-U-S-Supreme-Court&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nlrg.com&amp;#x2F;criminal-law-legal-research&amp;#x2F;bid&amp;#x2F;84670&amp;#x2F;C...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I think this part is pretty key, and has always been a big open question in my mind:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The court further recognized a potential problem in assessing reliability related to handler cuing, as even well-trained dogs could respond to subconscious cues from their handlers. For this reason, the court determined that a critical factor in determining reliability is the record of false positive alerts made by the dog.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;The subconscious cues, or even deliberate cues that only the handler and dog know, could allow an officer with ill intentions to make some kind of signal only known to him and the dog, which causes the dog to make an &amp;quot;alert&amp;quot;, giving the cop probable cause.</text></comment>
<story><title>A man spent a year in jail on murder charge that hinged on disputed AI evidence</title><url>https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/22/in_brief_ai/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>yawaworht1978</author><text>Wow i have never heard of that. Curious to see a link&amp;#x2F;article on the issue, if you can provide.</text></item><item><author>SamoyedFurFluff</author><text>I mean, drug dogs are still a thing even though we know they tend to respond to owners desires regardless of if there’s drugs present.</text></item><item><author>helsinkiandrew</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s scary that prosecutors thought that the ShotSpotter evidence is suitable for a court.  It&amp;#x27;s amazing technology that can help police get to a crime scene quickly but is far too easy to spoof or get the wrong answer due to reflections and other sounds etc.&lt;p&gt;Hopefully cases like this will eventually stop the system being used in court.</text></item><item><author>PragmaticPulp</author><text>The article says that employees of the AI company (ShotSpotter) manually reviewed and classified the sounds as gunshots:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; records showed that ShotSpotter actually initially picked up what sounded like a firework a mile away, and this was later reclassified by ShotSpotter staff to be a gunshot at the intersection where and when Williams was seen on camera.&lt;p&gt;So the AI didn’t even make the call. The staff did, manually. I assume that means the actual audio is available and entered into evidence?&lt;p&gt;If humans are making the call then blaming AI seems like a stretch. That’s almost like blaming the motion detection algorithms for triggering video recordings that were later reviewed by humans. It’s still humans reviewing the recordings and making decisions.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sennight</author><text>If you like that you&amp;#x27;ll love the Wikipedia entry for polygraphs :)&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Polygraph#Effectiveness&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Polygraph#Effectiveness&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>