There is enormous variability in how hard a tool is to use correctly, how likely it is to go wrong, and how severe the consequences are. AI has a wide range on all those variables because its use cases vary so widely compared to a hammer.
The use case here is police facial recognition. Not hitting nails. The parent wasn't saying "AI is a liability" with no context.
When somebody uses a tool to hurt somebody, they need to be held accountable. If I smack you with a hammer, that needs to be prosecuted. Using AI is no different.
The problem here is incidental to the tool; it was done by the cops and therefore nobody will be held accountable.
Systems are also a tool. Whoever institutes and helps build the system that systematically results in harm is also responsible.
That would be the vendors, the system planners, and the institutions that greenlit this. It would also include the larger financial tech circle that is trying to drive large scale AI adoption. Like Peter Thiel, who sees technology as an "alternative to politics". I.e. a way to circumvent democracy [1]
Nonsense. The manufacturer, distributor, and vendor of a hammer are not liable for its misuse. We already litigated and then legislated this regarding guns in the US.
As much as I detest Clearview and Thiel the fault for this incident falls squarely on the justice system.
AFAIK the actual cause for our high incarceration rate is that we have longer sentences. The conviction rate, for example, as compared to the UK is similar.
We will find out. But relying on AI is likely to cost the city of Fargo in one way or another. They say they have already stopped using AI and returned to good old fashioned human investigation.
Yes. But doing the investigation negates much of the incentive for using AI.
Look for similar to play out elsewhere --- using unreliable tools for decision making is not a good, responsible business plan. And lawyers are just waiting to press the point.
In this case it sounds as though AI could have been used to generate preliminary leads. When someone calls a tip line with information, police don’t just take their word for it, they investigate it. They know that tips they receive may be incorrect. They should have done the exact same here, but they didn’t.
I’m very opposed to AI in general, but this one is clearly human failure.
The noteworthy AI angle is the undeserved credence police gave to AI information. But that is ultimately their failure; they should be investigating all information they receive.
The failure starts with tool vendors who market these statistical/probabilistic pattern searchers as "intelligent". The Fargo police failed to fully evaluate these marketing claims before applying them to their work.
So in the same way that the failure rolled down hill, liability needs to roll back up.
The article says that the Fargo police claimed to have done "additional investigative steps independent of AI". (Perhaps they're lying, or did a poor job because they thought the extra steps were a formality.)
Look, I'm generally considered AI's most vociferous detractor.
But...
> there is no way to tell if you are using it "correctly".
This simply isn't true, at least in cases like this.
I know common sense isn't really all that common, but why would you give more credence to an untested tool than an untested crack-addled human informant?
The entire point of the informant, or the AI in this instance, is to generate leads. Which subsequently need to be checked.
This tool, however, is specifically built for mass surveillance. It serves no other purpose. The tool is broken, and everybody knows it. The tool makers are at least as guilty as those who use it.
The tool is unethical, not broken. And unfortunately remains legal for the time being. To that end it's a social or political problem that can be fixed.
What kind of outcome results from misuse? Clearly a hammer's misuse has very little in common with a global, hivemind network used in high-stake campaigns.
Now, if I misused a hammer and it hurt everyone's thumb in my country, then maybe what you said would have some merit.
Otherwise, I'd say it's an extremely lazy argument
... which is why the institutions that assign responsibility and consequences need to make it really clear that excuse won't fly. With illustrative examples.
I've been hearing "it's not just... it's a" touted as an AI sign recently, personally I think it's an AI sign because it's a human thinking shortcut sign, and AI copies it, but it would be funny if AI wrote the article and then hallucinated this specific money quote.
I doubt this happened here, but FWIW, AI does have a habit of "cleaning up" (read: hallucinating) interview transcript quotes if you ask it to go through a transcript and pull quotes. You have to prompt AI very specifically to get it to not "clean up" the quotes when you ask it to do that task.
Without even looking at the AI part, I have a single question: Did anybody investigate? That's it.
Whether it's AI that flagged her, or a witness who saw her, or her IP address appeared on the logs. Did anybody bothered to ask her "where were you the morning of july 10th between 3 and 4pm. But that's not what happened, they saw the data and said "we got her".
But this is the worst part of the story:
> And after her ordeal, she never plans to return to the state: “I’m just glad it’s over,” she told WDAY. “I’ll never go back to North Dakota.”
That's the lesson? Never go back to North Dakota. No, challenge the entire system. A few years back it was a kid accused of shoplifting [0]. Then a man dragged while his family was crying [1]. Unless we fight back, we are all guilty until cleared.
"The trauma, loss of liberty, and reputational damage cannot be easily fixed,” Lipps' lawyers told CNN in an email.
That sounds a LOT like a statement you make for before suing for damages, not to mention they literally say "Her lawyers are exploring civil rights claims but have yet to file a lawsuit, they said."
This lady probably just wants to go back to normal life and get some money for the hell they put her in. She has never been on a airplane before, I doubt she is going to take on the entire system like you suggest. Easier said than done to "challenge the entire system", what does that even mean exactly?
It was worse than that, the reporting from an earlier story[0]
...Unable to pay her bills from jail, she lost her home, her car and even her dog.
There is not a jury in the country that will side against the woman. I am not even sure who will make the best pop culture mashup - John Wick or a country song writer?
(Also, what happened to journalism - no Oxford comma?)
TBF isn't it rather unreasonable that our system permits your home to be foreclosed while you're detained prior to a hearing?
Also rather unreasonable to arrest someone who is clearly neither violent nor a flight risk. You could literally hold the trial via video conference at that point and there would be no downside.
At the risk of sounding like more of an anarchist (irony, autocorrect went with absurdist which isn’t entirely wrong either) than I might usually feel, that all depends on who you believe the system is for and works for? If you believe it’s “capitalism” as been so often proven, then it could be said that it’s entirely “reasonable”.
> depends on who you believe the system is for and works for
We are still enough of a democracy to blame ourselves for this. We could choose that the system is of the people, by the people, for the people. I think too many of us simply don't agree with that, except in the narrow situation where we are talking about ourself.
We could just overcome the tens of billions shoved into our faces aimed at undermining it and brainwashing us, and choose that the system is of the people?
The deck is so unbelievably stacked against it.
Another thing: many people hav e been permitted to vote in let's say 40 elections (at different levels), out of which maybe 1 had a candidate that indeed supported a "system that is of the people", and 39 didn't. Gets tough then doesn't it.
The real problem here is she'll get money, who knows how much, but that ultimately does nothing to actually address the problems in the system.
Effectively it just raises taxes to cover the cost of these failed prosecutions.
Everytime one of these cases happens, a cop and a prosecutor should be out of a job permanently. Possibly even jailed. The false arrest should lose the cop their job and get them blacklisted, the prosecution should lose the prosecutor's right to practice law.
And if the police union doesn't like that and decides to strike, every one of those cops should simply be fired. Much like we did to the ATC. We'd be better off hiring untrained civilians as cops than to keep propping up this system of warrior cops abusing the citizens.
> The false arrest should lose the cop their job and get them blacklisted
There is actually a federal register for LEOs that have been terminated for cause or resigned to avoid termination.
The police unions that operate in the jurisdictions that employ 70% of US police have negotiated into their CBAs that the register “cannot be used for hiring or promotional decisions”. Read into that what you will.
I'm generally pretty for unions, but the police union is one that's a complete cancer on society. It pretty much solely exists to make sure cops are free to harm the public without any sort of accountability.
Agreed. And I think we really, really need to put more effort into a "police the police" organization. Someone who has power only over the police, who the police do not have power over, to act as a check.
... test my support for the idea of unionization. I have even said in the past that I think public sector unions are especially important because their boss (the people) are the most capricious and malicious of all.
Maybe we could find a way to put guardrails on what they could and could not negotiate into a contract. Wages, benefits, basic job environmental conditions, stuff like that -- okay. But administrative policies which exist to prevent bad behavior should be non-negotiable.
Yes, of course someone should have investigated, but the larger point here is that people don’t because they are being sold a false narrative that AI is infallible and can do anything.
We could sit here all day arguing “you should always validate the results”, but even on HN there are people loudly advocating that you don’t need to.
Where are you seeing people being told that AI is infallible? AI is being hyped to the moon, but "infallible" is not one of the claims.
To the extent people trust AI to be infallible, it's just laziness and rapport (AI is rarely if ever rude without prompting, nor does it criticize extensive question-asking as many humans would, it's the quintessential enabler[1]) that causes people to assume that because it's useful and helpful for so many things, it'll be right about everything.
The models all have disclaimers that state the inverse. People just gradually lose sight of that.
[1] This might be the nature of LLMs, or it might be by design, similar to social media slop driving engagement. It's in AI companies' interest to have people buying subscriptions to talk with AIs more. If AI goes meta and critiques the user (except in more serious cases like harm to self or others, or specific kinds of cultural wrongthink), that's bad for business.
> To the extent people trust AI to be infallible, it's just laziness and rapport (…) that causes people to assume that because it's useful and helpful for so many things, it'll be right about everything.
Why it happens is secondary to the fact that it does.
> The models all have disclaimers that state the inverse. People just gradually lose sight of that.
Those disclaimers are barely effective (if at all), and everyone knows that. Including the ones putting them there.
I don't think people on HN think "AI is infallible", I think people on HN believe HN is sufficient enough for "most tasks". In the context of HN "most tasks" refers to programming tasks, not arresting and jailing people tasks.
You should always validate the results, but there is an inherint difference between an AI generated tool for personal use and a tool which could be used to destroy someones life.
The problem is that the people who will put this in place rate capability on a linear scale: in their view the ability to write software is sufficiently magic, so such an ability is obviously good enough to recognize criminals. From their perspective, there are hurdles to be crossed (like probable cause) and an AI flagging a suspect feels like a magical intelligence crossing those hurdles and allowing them to continue in the process.
They don't validate the results of their fellow officers, or the validity of warrants, or anything else that predicates an arrest. Why would they start with this?
What about cops and legislators? They thing AI is infallible and thats very convenient for them since they can thus not mandate cops having to double check tmwhat the AI suggests
The thing about the legal system is there's no incentive to investigate to find the truth.
The incentive is to prosecte and prove the charges.
Speaking from the experience of being falsely accused after calling 911 to stop a drunk woman from driving.
The narrative they "investigated" was so obviously false, bodycam evidence directly contradicted multiple key facts. Officials are interested only seeking to prove the case. Thankfully the jury came to the right verdict.
Imo they're right, if you're faced with the option of running away from some crazy person or interacting with the police in the USA, the safer option is to run.
A police interaction can escalate to ruinous heights within seconds due to no fault of your own. Remember that cop that got scared by an acorn falling and started shooting at random? I don't care how many "good cops" there are, I'm not rolling the dice on encountering an acorn cop.
> The thing about the legal system is there's no incentive to investigate to find the truth.
The truth is much more complicated and involves politics. For example Seattle (and possibly other cities?) enacted a law that involves paying damages for being wrong in the event of bringing certain types of charges. But that has resulted in some widely publicized examples where the prosecutor erred by being overly cautious.
And then you have Florida who will bill you about $100 a day for finding yourself in a Florida jail, regardless of whether charges were dismissed, you were found not guilty or any such thing.
And to nobody’s surprise, failure to pay this bill is in itself a Class B felony…
That sounds like a recipe for domestic terrorism - the systemic disenfranchisement of people who have done nothing wrong for no apparent reason other than sheer greed. How long has this been in effect there?
I'm confused. Are you suggesting such a ridiculous system is letting class B felonies slide here? That would certainly be the pragmatic approach to being evil but in that case simply treating it as regular debt and going through civil channels would be more than sufficient.
Are you letting stuff in your backlog that you'll never get to before the product is gone or irrelevant "slide"?
Sure they could round those people up pretty easily just by following up on any contact with the system that they have, but why, for what, to cost the state more money that will likely never be repaid? Especially when sticking a body on DUI detail is hugely in the black. They'll just let that debt, it's accruing interests and the threat of further incarceration linger on the books indefinitely. If the person ever gets their life together they'll have to pay it or face incarceration.
I'm sure someone somewhere has written a DB query to select from outstanding balance where <exists in some other DB that is a proxy for people who have money to pay> and prioritize those cases.
Are you suggesting that Florida it’s to go ‘soft on “crime”’? That would fly in the face of almost all available evidence.
I have extended family in Florida. The system absolutely can and does and will push the issue. There’s a reason that it’s a crime not to pay for your incarceration even if you have a finding of factual innocence against you.
God I hate these sorts of takes. Your family isn't sleeping under a bridge or whatever. Of course the system wants your money or the money of people on comparable economic footing you associate with. If you can work as a debt slave to the system it wants you to do that. The man sleeping under a bridge cannot, so the cops and the DA and everyone else just go fry bigger fish. Maybe they push the issue 1/100th of the time and incarcerate someone every now and they but they absolutely do not prioritize it the way they do someone who could pay even if only by moving heaven and earth. The system doesn't want to manufacture yet another felony and then incarcerate someone for it out of thin air, that just costs the system more money.
Source: my tiny keyhole view into the system.
The parties involve always have have discretion to downgrade stuff to something else, or not pursue it at all and are incentivizes.
I agree with this sentiment but when you start punishing this sort of thing you create more incentive to cover it up. It's a tricky problem and I'm not sure there's a perfect solution.
What we really need is a change in police culture.
Then the system should be redesigned such that transparency is a priority and cover ups are not feasible. And when cover ups eventually get found out, the punishments even more severe.
until then, there's a simple rule which works well: never talk to a cop. Or at least say the minimum number of words possible, give them nothing to use against you. Present ID if they ask for it, but never admit anything. If they persist, "lawyer". That has worked for me.
Great idea, Except that this will never happen because public sector unions are important voting blocks. Public sector unions should be abolished (don’t have a problem with unions) but the conflict of interest is just too great.
Great point. Obviously can't expect them to vote against their own interests, because higher standards, higher accountability, and higher transparency will always be against those interests.
There’s a judge down in Texas, Dallas area I believe, who is in social media a lot because he will excoriate prosecutors who bring bs in to his court room. He’s not soft on crime but hard on rights and process. If a defendant did the wrong thing, he will have the appropriate amount of sympathy, down to zero. At times he will tell them, we all know you got lucky here, do better. But he won’t let prosecutors slate by on garbage charges or statements or investigations by police. Which leads to my primary point at least for this discussion in particular:
To me the scariest part of this as a process is how many times (I’d casually estimate at least 75%) it is blindingly obvious that the prosecutor has not read the statement of charges or officer statements until everyone is in front of the judge. I get on one hand this judge seems to often be handling probable cause hearings but so many of these should never have resulted in any paperwork being turned in to the prosecution, let alone anyone having to show up in court.
> The narrative they "investigated" was so obviously false, bodycam evidence directly contradicted multiple key facts. Officials are interested only seeking to prove the case. Thankfully the jury came to the right verdict.
I don't get it, if they only care about prosecuting and proving the case, wouldn't they go by the bodycam evidence? They didn't prove the case. Maybe if their incentive was to prosecute and prove the charges, they'd go by the obvious evidence. Or am I missing something here?
It absolutely was. There's no question of this. Now we need to ask how was the system marketed, what did the police pay for it, how were they trained to use it?
> anybody bothered to ask her "where were you the morning of july 10th between 3 and 4pm.
Legally that amounts "hearsay" and cannot have any value. Those statements probably won't even be admissible in court without other supporting facts entered in first.
> we are all guilty until cleared.
This is not at a phenomenon that started with AI. If you scratch the surface, even slightly, you'll find that this is a common strategy used against defendants who are perceived as not being financially or logistically capable of defending themselves.
We have a private prison industry. The line between these two outcomes is very short.
"I saw her at the library" is firsthand testimony.
"I saw her library card in her pocket" is firsthand testimony.
"She was at the library - Bob told me so" is hearsay. Just look at the word - "hear say". Hearsay is testifying about events where your knowledge does not come from your own firsthand observations of the event itself.
> Legally that amounts "hearsay" and cannot have any value. Those statements probably won't even be admissible in court without other supporting facts entered in first.
I just want to understand your argument: you believe that any alibi provided is hearsay, and has no legal value, and that they can't even take the statement in order to validate it? That's your position?
The condition here being she was already arrested. You don't arrest someone first and then try to establish their alibi second. That would be an investigation which would be prior to getting a warrant which would allow you to arrest someone. You will never talk yourself out of an arrest, you might talk yourself out of an investigation.
You can offer your story to the police but the fact that you did or what you said to them will not come into evidence in court. You cannot call the officer to the stand and then ask them to repeat in court what you said. That would be "hearsay." So, for a lot of reasons, if you're already arrested, you probably don't even want to tell them any of that. It can only be used against you and never for you. Get your lawyer and have them ready the case to prove that alibi for you.
Society went through the necessary lessons with DNA and fingerprints. Putting people in jail because the computer produce a match is a terrible idea, especially when its done by an proprietary dark box that no one really understand why it claims there is a match. It can be used as a tool of investigations to give the investigators an hint to find real more substantial clues, but using it like in fiction where the computer can act as the single truth is terrible for society and justice.
A month ago or so people on HN discussed facial recognition when looking victims and perpetrators in child exploitation material, and people were complaining that meta did not allow this fast enough. Neither the article or the people in that discussion draw any connection that the issues in this article could happen. People seemingly want to think that the lesson is "Never go back to North Dakota", as that is a much easier lesson than considering false positives in detection algorithms and their impact on a legal system that is constrained in budget, time, training and incentives.
Agree in principle. But people like her does not have the resources, financially and emotionally to go through the legal system again. Unless there are charitable lawyers who are willing to do it on her behalf for free.
First, the detective used the FaceSketchID system, which has been around since around 2014. It is not new or uniquely tied to modern AI.
Second, the system only suggests possible matches. It is still up to the detective to investigate further and decide whether to pursue charges. And then it is up to court to issue the warrant.
The real question is why she was held in jail for four months. That is the part that I do not understand. My understanding is that there is 30-day limit (the requesting state must pick up the defendant within 30 day).
Regarding the individual involved, Angela Lipps, she has reportedly been arrested before, so it is possible she was on parole. So maybe they were holding her because of that?
In the US there are no consequences for people in power failing to follow procedures, laws or regulations - except for being told to stop doing whatever illegal thing they're doing, and possibly getting sued way down the line, which gets paid by taxpayers.
From reading more into the case, it seems the issue may be related to how her lawyer handled the case.
They probably did “identity challenge” arguing that she is not the right person. But from Tennessee’s perspective, she was considered the correct person to be arrested, so there was no “mistaken identity” in their system. In other words, North Dakota Wanted person x and here is person x.
Once a judge in North Dakota reviewed the full evidence (and found that person they issued warrant for arrest is not one they want), the case was dismissed.
Because the police or the prosecutor or whatever can ask for whatever they want, but it's up to the judge to refuse their stupid claims. Though the others should get some blame too.
The judge likely issued the warrant based on the detective’s sworn testimony. In most cases, a judge does not have the ability or detailed knowledge to independently verify whether the detective completed all necessary checks.
This situation likely resulted from either sloppy investigative work or an honest mistake: the detective believed her booking photo matched the individual captured on camera.
This isn’t how it works, you can invoke your right to a speedy trial at any point you want. You can spend 2 months waiting and then invoke it if you want.
The timer starts from when you invoke it, though.
The 2 issues, which she may be caught in, are that it’s “speedy” from the perspective of a court, and that it really means “free from undue delays”.
There is no general definition of a speedy trial, but I think the shortest period any state defines is a month (with some states considering several months to still be “speedy”).
A trial can still be speedy even past that window if the prosecution can make a case that they genuinely need more time (like waiting for lab tests to come back).
It’s basically only ever not speedy if the prosecution is just not doing anything.
You get charged with something and if you want to have the trial right now, before you have any idea what's going on, then you can insist, which basically nobody does because it's pretty crazy to go in blind
Actually most criminal defense attorneys recommend not waiving your speedy trial rights. Yes, the defense goes in blind. But so does the prosecution, and they're the ones that have to make a case.
The usual result for defendants that don't waive their speedy trial rights is an acquittal if the case goes to trial (between 50-60%), which doesn't sound like a lot but prosecutors are expected to win >90% of their trials. Additionally, in many counties they don't have sufficient courtrooms to handle all the criminal trials within the speedy trial timeframe, so if the trial date comes and a courtroom is not available the case is dismissed with prejudice. Nonviolent misdeameanors are the lowest priority for a courtroom (and by that I mean even family law cases have priority over nonviolent misdos in most counties), so those cases are frequently dismissed a day or two before the trial date. Consequently, most prosecutors will offer better and better plea bargains as the trial date approaches.
This is even more true for murders, which is why murder suspects don't usually get charged for a year or two after the crime.
Her picture was used as part of a fake id card, in the commission of a crime. The fuzzy camera footage looked like her (from stills I've seen) and her picture was on the fake ID. Those 2 circumstantial items were, apparently, enough to have a warrant issued.
They picked her up in TN and held her for 4 months, even after:
The ND police knew the ID was fake and the person using it was not her.
The ND police knew she had been in TN before, during, and after the crime.
She is still technically a suspect, even after all of this has come out.
From the first time the story surfaced, for spurious reasons[1] she was booked as fugitive, and that made it so that there was "no need" for normal timeframe of hearing.
[1] The reason being that she was found in Tennessee while being searched for a crime in another state, thus allowing them to treat it as interstate fugitive from a crime scene
> It is still up to the detective to investigate further and decide whether to pursue charges. And then it is up to court to issue the warrant.
This is how it should work, but I still think it is important to discuss these failures in the context of AI risks.
One of the largest real-world dangers of AI (as we define that now) is that it is often confidently wrong and this is a terrible situation when it comes to human factors.
A lot of people are wired in such a way that perceived confidence hacks right through their amygdala and they immediately default to trust, no matter how unwarranted.
> The real question is why she was held in jail for four months. That is the part that I do not understand. My understanding is that there is 30-day limit (the requesting state must pick up the defendant within 30 day). Regarding the individual involved, Angela Lipps, she has reportedly been arrested before, so it is possible she was on parole. So maybe they were holding her because of that?
As the article gestures towards, challenging the extradition can greatly extend the timeline, from 30 days after the arrest to 90 days after a formal identity hearing. Which isn't fair and isn't intuitive, but is unfortunately a long-standing part of the system. (Even worse, this kind of mistaken identity can't be challenged in an extradition hearing; the question isn't whether she's the person who committed the crime but whether she's the person identified in the warrant.)
The vendor they used, Clearview AI, does not allow you to request data deletion unless you live in one of the half-dozen states that legally mandate it.
Sadly this is really the only tool we have right now. Just have to keep spamming them with delete requests because once they delete it’ll end up back in their database eventually.
To get your data deleted in the states that require it you have to submit a photo of yourself which I really don't want to do for a sketchy company with ties to evil billionaire Peter Thiel.
For IL residents the policy requires collection and retention of your biomarkers. Presumably there is a law enforcement exclusion implicitly or explicitly, eg search via administrative warrant.
It’s a classic example of the base rate fallacy. The judge sees that a system with a seemingly high accuracy rate (like 99.999% accurate) has flagged a person, and they assume that means the person is highly likely to be guilty.
However, the system uses a dragnet approach, and is checking against millions of people. If you are checking 300 million people, that 99.999% accuracy check is going to find 3,000 people, and AT LEAST 99.96% of those people are going to be innocent.
This is why we can’t have wide, automated surveillance.
The actual scariest part isn't that the AI got it wrong... it's that nobody felt the need to verify the AI. A tip from an anonymous caller can get investigated and found out if its true or not, and a match from a facial recognition system apparently does not. People haven't built better investigative tools they've just built better ways to skip around the investigation.
For me the worst thing in this case is that a JUDGE signed off on an arrest warrant with only a clearview match linking Ms Lipps to the crime.
A judge and the warrant process are supposed to be the safeguard against police doing shady stuff (like relying on an AI hit to decide who commit a crime). But if the judges can't be bothered...
So cops used AI to attempt to investigate a crime. But, there was no crime - the arrest was wrong. Why can cops excuse themselves here for delegating their responsibilities (protecting society, allegedly that is) onto software? AI may also be written by some corporations to "tweak" this or that, see this foreign-looking guy being more likely to be AI-investigated. This is like the movie Minority Report - but stupid. IMO the courts should conclude that cops should not be allowed to use AI without having a prior, independently verified objective reasoning for any investigation. This mass sniffing that is currently going on is very clearly illegal. The current orange guy does not care about the law; see flock cameras aka spy cameras employed by the government on all car drivers at all times.
You're absolutely right! There was a crime. I appreciate the course correction—it’s a significant oversight on my part. I've updated our previous plan to better reflect that a crime occurred. You're under arrest.
This isn't the first time this month I've read about someone suffering consequences of mistaken identity after their facial recognition said they look like someone who committed a crime. I'm sure this is starting to happen at an alarming rate.
The fundamental problem is that among the 350 million people living in the United States, there are a lot of pairs of people who look pretty darn similar. It used to be impractical to ask a question like "who in the US looks like the person in this security footage", and so as a matter of practicality, once you found someone who looks like the suspect, you probably also have other evidence, even if it's pretty weak, linking them to the crime.
But with AI, you can ask "who in the US looks like this person", and so we need to re-calibrate what it means if all you know is that someone looks like a suspect. I am of the opinion that "looks like someone," in the absence of any other evidence, is reasonable suspicion, but not probable cause, that you are the person you look like. Reasonable suspicion is enough for the police to stop you on the street and ask for your ID, but not enough to arrest you. There are other data points that alone might not even be reasonable suspicion, but could be combined with "looks like someone" to make probable cause, such as "was near the place at the time the crime happened".
AI isn't really the problem, even whether or not the AI's determination that two people look alike is valid or reviewed by a human isn't the problem. The problem is assuming that because two people look alike they must be the same person, even if you have no other evidence of them being the same person.
jqpabc123 | 20 hours ago
garyfirestorm | 20 hours ago
happytoexplain | 20 hours ago
The use case here is police facial recognition. Not hitting nails. The parent wasn't saying "AI is a liability" with no context.
mikkupikku | 19 hours ago
The problem here is incidental to the tool; it was done by the cops and therefore nobody will be held accountable.
tovej | 19 hours ago
That would be the vendors, the system planners, and the institutions that greenlit this. It would also include the larger financial tech circle that is trying to drive large scale AI adoption. Like Peter Thiel, who sees technology as an "alternative to politics". I.e. a way to circumvent democracy [1]
[1] https://stavroulapabst.substack.com/p/techxgeopolitics-18-te...
fc417fc802 | 12 hours ago
As much as I detest Clearview and Thiel the fault for this incident falls squarely on the justice system.
suzzer99 | 19 hours ago
mikkupikku | 19 hours ago
jqpabc123 | 19 hours ago
mikkupikku | 19 hours ago
jfengel | 19 hours ago
GaryBluto | 19 hours ago
jfengel | 19 hours ago
AngryData | 18 hours ago
rootusrootus | 17 hours ago
suzzer99 | 18 hours ago
skeeter2020 | 19 hours ago
jqpabc123 | 19 hours ago
Only one small little problem --- there is no way to tell if you are using it "correctly".
The only way to be sure is to not use it.
Using it basically boils down to, "Do you feel lucky?".
The Fargo police didn't get lucky in this case. And now the liability kicks in.
jfengel | 19 hours ago
jqpabc123 | 19 hours ago
https://www.lawlegalhub.com/how-much-is-a-wrongful-arrest-la...
nkrisc | 19 hours ago
jqpabc123 | 19 hours ago
Look for similar to play out elsewhere --- using unreliable tools for decision making is not a good, responsible business plan. And lawyers are just waiting to press the point.
bornfreddy | 18 hours ago
jqpabc123 | 18 hours ago
At some point, you have to decide if wasting good money on bad intel makes sense.
nkrisc | 18 hours ago
I’m very opposed to AI in general, but this one is clearly human failure.
The noteworthy AI angle is the undeserved credence police gave to AI information. But that is ultimately their failure; they should be investigating all information they receive.
jqpabc123 | 18 hours ago
Absolutely.
The failure starts with tool vendors who market these statistical/probabilistic pattern searchers as "intelligent". The Fargo police failed to fully evaluate these marketing claims before applying them to their work.
So in the same way that the failure rolled down hill, liability needs to roll back up.
SpicyLemonZest | 15 hours ago
zephen | 16 hours ago
But...
> there is no way to tell if you are using it "correctly".
This simply isn't true, at least in cases like this.
I know common sense isn't really all that common, but why would you give more credence to an untested tool than an untested crack-addled human informant?
The entire point of the informant, or the AI in this instance, is to generate leads. Which subsequently need to be checked.
jqpabc123 | 14 hours ago
But this approach negates much of the incentive to pay for questionable results.
zephen | 12 hours ago
As is true with results from people.
> But this approach negates much of the incentive to pay for questionable results.
I'm not sure that follows. Even the crack-addled human informant has always been paid for questionable results.
jqpabc123 | 10 hours ago
People as untrustworthy as AI often fail to maintain their jobs.
tgv | 19 hours ago
cyanydeez | 19 hours ago
fc417fc802 | 12 hours ago
MattDaEskimo | 19 hours ago
Now, if I misused a hammer and it hurt everyone's thumb in my country, then maybe what you said would have some merit.
Otherwise, I'd say it's an extremely lazy argument
hrimfaxi | 17 hours ago
gtowey | 19 hours ago
jqpabc123 | 19 hours ago
https://pub.towardsai.net/the-air-gapped-chronicles-the-cour...
gtowey | 14 hours ago
Hizonner | 19 hours ago
mitchbob | 20 hours ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47356968
oopsiremembered | 19 hours ago
"[I]t’s not just a technology problem, it’s a technology and people problem."
I can't. I just can't.
bryanrasmussen | 18 hours ago
oopsiremembered | 18 hours ago
b112 | 17 hours ago
If you look at examples of people quoting on the internet, lots are out of context, paraphrased, or made up.
AI is just mimicking what it has seen.
firefoxd | 19 hours ago
Whether it's AI that flagged her, or a witness who saw her, or her IP address appeared on the logs. Did anybody bothered to ask her "where were you the morning of july 10th between 3 and 4pm. But that's not what happened, they saw the data and said "we got her".
But this is the worst part of the story:
> And after her ordeal, she never plans to return to the state: “I’m just glad it’s over,” she told WDAY. “I’ll never go back to North Dakota.”
That's the lesson? Never go back to North Dakota. No, challenge the entire system. A few years back it was a kid accused of shoplifting [0]. Then a man dragged while his family was crying [1]. Unless we fight back, we are all guilty until cleared.
[0]: https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/29/apple_sis_lawsuit/
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23628394
bl4ckneon | 18 hours ago
"The trauma, loss of liberty, and reputational damage cannot be easily fixed,” Lipps' lawyers told CNN in an email.
That sounds a LOT like a statement you make for before suing for damages, not to mention they literally say "Her lawyers are exploring civil rights claims but have yet to file a lawsuit, they said."
This lady probably just wants to go back to normal life and get some money for the hell they put her in. She has never been on a airplane before, I doubt she is going to take on the entire system like you suggest. Easier said than done to "challenge the entire system", what does that even mean exactly?
3eb7988a1663 | 17 hours ago
(Also, what happened to journalism - no Oxford comma?)
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47356968
frankharv | 17 hours ago
Where your home was lost to foreclosure because one JUDGE did not look at the paperwork.
There should be a way to personally sue somebody when they don't do their job. Protecting the innocent. The JUDGE failed badly here.
Flimsy evidence would mean no warrant. Do your basic investigation please... Rubberstamping JUDGE caused this.
Why are they not named? Like they are a spectator. Infact they are the cause.
fc417fc802 | 13 hours ago
Also rather unreasonable to arrest someone who is clearly neither violent nor a flight risk. You could literally hold the trial via video conference at that point and there would be no downside.
FireBeyond | 11 hours ago
rootusrootus | 9 hours ago
We are still enough of a democracy to blame ourselves for this. We could choose that the system is of the people, by the people, for the people. I think too many of us simply don't agree with that, except in the narrow situation where we are talking about ourself.
deaux | 8 hours ago
The deck is so unbelievably stacked against it.
Another thing: many people hav e been permitted to vote in let's say 40 elections (at different levels), out of which maybe 1 had a candidate that indeed supported a "system that is of the people", and 39 didn't. Gets tough then doesn't it.
cguess | 17 hours ago
3eb7988a1663 | 17 hours ago
erikerikson | 16 hours ago
krferriter | 16 hours ago
segmondy | 17 hours ago
3eb7988a1663 | 11 hours ago
deaux | 8 hours ago
redeeman | 15 hours ago
cogman10 | 13 hours ago
Effectively it just raises taxes to cover the cost of these failed prosecutions.
Everytime one of these cases happens, a cop and a prosecutor should be out of a job permanently. Possibly even jailed. The false arrest should lose the cop their job and get them blacklisted, the prosecution should lose the prosecutor's right to practice law.
And if the police union doesn't like that and decides to strike, every one of those cops should simply be fired. Much like we did to the ATC. We'd be better off hiring untrained civilians as cops than to keep propping up this system of warrior cops abusing the citizens.
FireBeyond | 11 hours ago
There is actually a federal register for LEOs that have been terminated for cause or resigned to avoid termination.
The police unions that operate in the jurisdictions that employ 70% of US police have negotiated into their CBAs that the register “cannot be used for hiring or promotional decisions”. Read into that what you will.
cogman10 | 10 hours ago
rootusrootus | 9 hours ago
rootusrootus | 9 hours ago
... test my support for the idea of unionization. I have even said in the past that I think public sector unions are especially important because their boss (the people) are the most capricious and malicious of all.
Maybe we could find a way to put guardrails on what they could and could not negotiate into a contract. Wages, benefits, basic job environmental conditions, stuff like that -- okay. But administrative policies which exist to prevent bad behavior should be non-negotiable.
latexr | 15 hours ago
We could sit here all day arguing “you should always validate the results”, but even on HN there are people loudly advocating that you don’t need to.
dpkirchner | 15 hours ago
harshreality | 14 hours ago
To the extent people trust AI to be infallible, it's just laziness and rapport (AI is rarely if ever rude without prompting, nor does it criticize extensive question-asking as many humans would, it's the quintessential enabler[1]) that causes people to assume that because it's useful and helpful for so many things, it'll be right about everything.
The models all have disclaimers that state the inverse. People just gradually lose sight of that.
[1] This might be the nature of LLMs, or it might be by design, similar to social media slop driving engagement. It's in AI companies' interest to have people buying subscriptions to talk with AIs more. If AI goes meta and critiques the user (except in more serious cases like harm to self or others, or specific kinds of cultural wrongthink), that's bad for business.
jmalicki | 14 hours ago
I see all kinds of people being told that AI-based AI detection software used for detecting AI in writing is infallible!
You want to make sure people aren't using fallible AI? Use our AI to detect AI? What could possibly go wrong.
the_af | 13 hours ago
latexr | 12 hours ago
Why it happens is secondary to the fact that it does.
> The models all have disclaimers that state the inverse. People just gradually lose sight of that.
Those disclaimers are barely effective (if at all), and everyone knows that. Including the ones putting them there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xj4aRhHJOWU
HDBaseT | 12 hours ago
You should always validate the results, but there is an inherint difference between an AI generated tool for personal use and a tool which could be used to destroy someones life.
ultrarunner | 8 hours ago
They don't validate the results of their fellow officers, or the validity of warrants, or anything else that predicates an arrest. Why would they start with this?
samrus | 4 hours ago
tmpz22 | 15 hours ago
Better just to apply Musk or Altman software to the problem and avoid it entirely.
rcvassallo83 | 15 hours ago
The incentive is to prosecte and prove the charges.
Speaking from the experience of being falsely accused after calling 911 to stop a drunk woman from driving.
The narrative they "investigated" was so obviously false, bodycam evidence directly contradicted multiple key facts. Officials are interested only seeking to prove the case. Thankfully the jury came to the right verdict.
hnuser123456 | 14 hours ago
loloquwowndueo | 10 hours ago
komali2 | 2 hours ago
A police interaction can escalate to ruinous heights within seconds due to no fault of your own. Remember that cop that got scared by an acorn falling and started shooting at random? I don't care how many "good cops" there are, I'm not rolling the dice on encountering an acorn cop.
fc417fc802 | 13 hours ago
The truth is much more complicated and involves politics. For example Seattle (and possibly other cities?) enacted a law that involves paying damages for being wrong in the event of bringing certain types of charges. But that has resulted in some widely publicized examples where the prosecutor erred by being overly cautious.
FireBeyond | 11 hours ago
And to nobody’s surprise, failure to pay this bill is in itself a Class B felony…
autotune | 11 hours ago
fc417fc802 | 10 hours ago
cucumber3732842 | 9 hours ago
fc417fc802 | 9 hours ago
cucumber3732842 | 36 minutes ago
Sure they could round those people up pretty easily just by following up on any contact with the system that they have, but why, for what, to cost the state more money that will likely never be repaid? Especially when sticking a body on DUI detail is hugely in the black. They'll just let that debt, it's accruing interests and the threat of further incarceration linger on the books indefinitely. If the person ever gets their life together they'll have to pay it or face incarceration.
I'm sure someone somewhere has written a DB query to select from outstanding balance where <exists in some other DB that is a proxy for people who have money to pay> and prioritize those cases.
FireBeyond | 7 hours ago
I have extended family in Florida. The system absolutely can and does and will push the issue. There’s a reason that it’s a crime not to pay for your incarceration even if you have a finding of factual innocence against you.
cucumber3732842 | 42 minutes ago
Source: my tiny keyhole view into the system. The parties involve always have have discretion to downgrade stuff to something else, or not pursue it at all and are incentivizes.
retrochameleon | 13 hours ago
Minimum 1 year of jail time for grossly wrongful arrests that could be avoided with standard procedure or investigation tactics that were not applied.
helterskelter | 10 hours ago
What we really need is a change in police culture.
retrochameleon | 10 hours ago
true_religion | 8 hours ago
Is the termination of your career and/or potential retraining and social embarrassment not already an incentive to cover up?
jcgrillo | 6 hours ago
until then, there's a simple rule which works well: never talk to a cop. Or at least say the minimum number of words possible, give them nothing to use against you. Present ID if they ask for it, but never admit anything. If they persist, "lawyer". That has worked for me.
pstuart | 8 hours ago
The police today have zero incentive to serve the public, they have zero skin in the game and can literally get away with murder.
Any time you hear the call for "law and order", that is the audience that supports the current system, because they like it like this.
balderdash | 7 hours ago
retrochameleon | an hour ago
FireBeyond | 11 hours ago
To me the scariest part of this as a process is how many times (I’d casually estimate at least 75%) it is blindingly obvious that the prosecutor has not read the statement of charges or officer statements until everyone is in front of the judge. I get on one hand this judge seems to often be handling probable cause hearings but so many of these should never have resulted in any paperwork being turned in to the prosecution, let alone anyone having to show up in court.
phonon | 9 hours ago
komali2 | 2 hours ago
pylua | 10 hours ago
That’s seems to be in the realm of poissibility here if I am understanding things correctly (imo)
bko | 9 hours ago
I don't get it, if they only care about prosecuting and proving the case, wouldn't they go by the bodycam evidence? They didn't prove the case. Maybe if their incentive was to prosecute and prove the charges, they'd go by the obvious evidence. Or am I missing something here?
themafia | 14 hours ago
It absolutely was. There's no question of this. Now we need to ask how was the system marketed, what did the police pay for it, how were they trained to use it?
> anybody bothered to ask her "where were you the morning of july 10th between 3 and 4pm.
Legally that amounts "hearsay" and cannot have any value. Those statements probably won't even be admissible in court without other supporting facts entered in first.
> we are all guilty until cleared.
This is not at a phenomenon that started with AI. If you scratch the surface, even slightly, you'll find that this is a common strategy used against defendants who are perceived as not being financially or logistically capable of defending themselves.
We have a private prison industry. The line between these two outcomes is very short.
LocalH | 14 hours ago
How is that hearsay if she's directly testifying to her own whereabouts?
Hearsay would be if someone else was testifying "she was in X location on july 10th between 3 and 4pm", without the accused being available for cross
Borealid | 13 hours ago
"I was at the library" is firsthand testimony.
"I saw her at the library" is firsthand testimony.
"I saw her library card in her pocket" is firsthand testimony.
"She was at the library - Bob told me so" is hearsay. Just look at the word - "hear say". Hearsay is testifying about events where your knowledge does not come from your own firsthand observations of the event itself.
jmye | 11 hours ago
I just want to understand your argument: you believe that any alibi provided is hearsay, and has no legal value, and that they can't even take the statement in order to validate it? That's your position?
themafia | 8 hours ago
You can offer your story to the police but the fact that you did or what you said to them will not come into evidence in court. You cannot call the officer to the stand and then ask them to repeat in court what you said. That would be "hearsay." So, for a lot of reasons, if you're already arrested, you probably don't even want to tell them any of that. It can only be used against you and never for you. Get your lawyer and have them ready the case to prove that alibi for you.
Larrikin | 9 hours ago
belorn | 11 hours ago
A month ago or so people on HN discussed facial recognition when looking victims and perpetrators in child exploitation material, and people were complaining that meta did not allow this fast enough. Neither the article or the people in that discussion draw any connection that the issues in this article could happen. People seemingly want to think that the lesson is "Never go back to North Dakota", as that is a much easier lesson than considering false positives in detection algorithms and their impact on a legal system that is constrained in budget, time, training and incentives.
NL807 | 6 hours ago
Agree in principle. But people like her does not have the resources, financially and emotionally to go through the legal system again. Unless there are charitable lawyers who are willing to do it on her behalf for free.
tlogan | 18 hours ago
First, the detective used the FaceSketchID system, which has been around since around 2014. It is not new or uniquely tied to modern AI.
Second, the system only suggests possible matches. It is still up to the detective to investigate further and decide whether to pursue charges. And then it is up to court to issue the warrant.
The real question is why she was held in jail for four months. That is the part that I do not understand. My understanding is that there is 30-day limit (the requesting state must pick up the defendant within 30 day). Regarding the individual involved, Angela Lipps, she has reportedly been arrested before, so it is possible she was on parole. So maybe they were holding her because of that?
Can someone clarify how that process works?
suzzer99 | 18 hours ago
tlogan | 17 hours ago
They probably did “identity challenge” arguing that she is not the right person. But from Tennessee’s perspective, she was considered the correct person to be arrested, so there was no “mistaken identity” in their system. In other words, North Dakota Wanted person x and here is person x.
Once a judge in North Dakota reviewed the full evidence (and found that person they issued warrant for arrest is not one they want), the case was dismissed.
frankharv | 17 hours ago
Cops did not do a proper investigation and the judge green-lighted it.
It is all on the JUDGE or possibly a magistrate who approved a faulty warrant.
The judge failed the poor woman. FIRE him.
Then sue Clearview for big bucks.
contrast | 16 hours ago
lovich | 14 hours ago
Some people are just weird
wl | 14 hours ago
elektronika | 9 hours ago
ciupicri | 13 hours ago
tlogan | 15 hours ago
This situation likely resulted from either sloppy investigative work or an honest mistake: the detective believed her booking photo matched the individual captured on camera.
Her booking photo from a prior arrest can be found here: https://mugshots.com/US-States/Tennessee/Carter-County-TN/An...
Do we have recording of the suspect they used for the match?
natebc | 14 hours ago
https://www.grandforksherald.com/news/north-dakota/ai-error-...
suzzer99 | 11 hours ago
AnthonyMouse | 16 hours ago
everforward | 16 hours ago
The timer starts from when you invoke it, though.
The 2 issues, which she may be caught in, are that it’s “speedy” from the perspective of a court, and that it really means “free from undue delays”.
There is no general definition of a speedy trial, but I think the shortest period any state defines is a month (with some states considering several months to still be “speedy”).
A trial can still be speedy even past that window if the prosecution can make a case that they genuinely need more time (like waiting for lab tests to come back).
It’s basically only ever not speedy if the prosecution is just not doing anything.
gamblor956 | 15 hours ago
Actually most criminal defense attorneys recommend not waiving your speedy trial rights. Yes, the defense goes in blind. But so does the prosecution, and they're the ones that have to make a case.
The usual result for defendants that don't waive their speedy trial rights is an acquittal if the case goes to trial (between 50-60%), which doesn't sound like a lot but prosecutors are expected to win >90% of their trials. Additionally, in many counties they don't have sufficient courtrooms to handle all the criminal trials within the speedy trial timeframe, so if the trial date comes and a courtroom is not available the case is dismissed with prejudice. Nonviolent misdeameanors are the lowest priority for a courtroom (and by that I mean even family law cases have priority over nonviolent misdos in most counties), so those cases are frequently dismissed a day or two before the trial date. Consequently, most prosecutors will offer better and better plea bargains as the trial date approaches.
This is even more true for murders, which is why murder suspects don't usually get charged for a year or two after the crime.
AnthonyMouse | 15 hours ago
strictnein | 17 hours ago
zoklet-enjoyer | 17 hours ago
Source: I live in Fargo and have been following this story closely. Everyone here is pissed
frankharv | 17 hours ago
I wonder who is slandering her more... WOW
Maybe the citys insurance carrier hired a FIRM...
They will be taking a hit.
frankharv | 17 hours ago
Maybe she objected to the extradition order without good counsel.
"I aint never been to N.Dakota". She found out the hard way how the law works..
What about the banks being hit. Surely they have good cameras. This was bad mojo. I would think a Wells Fargo/BoA has a unit for this stuff.
Finincial crimes handled like this. The banks will be sued too I suspect.. Deep pockets settle out.
Supermancho | 17 hours ago
They picked her up in TN and held her for 4 months, even after:
The ND police knew the ID was fake and the person using it was not her. The ND police knew she had been in TN before, during, and after the crime.
She is still technically a suspect, even after all of this has come out.
tlogan | 14 hours ago
What I still do not understand is why she spent nearly six months in a Tennessee jail. That part remains unclear and needs further explanation.
p_l | 14 hours ago
[1] The reason being that she was found in Tennessee while being searched for a crime in another state, thus allowing them to treat it as interstate fugitive from a crime scene
georgemcbay | 16 hours ago
This is how it should work, but I still think it is important to discuss these failures in the context of AI risks.
One of the largest real-world dangers of AI (as we define that now) is that it is often confidently wrong and this is a terrible situation when it comes to human factors.
A lot of people are wired in such a way that perceived confidence hacks right through their amygdala and they immediately default to trust, no matter how unwarranted.
SpicyLemonZest | 14 hours ago
As the article gestures towards, challenging the extradition can greatly extend the timeline, from 30 days after the arrest to 90 days after a formal identity hearing. Which isn't fair and isn't intuitive, but is unfortunately a long-standing part of the system. (Even worse, this kind of mistaken identity can't be challenged in an extradition hearing; the question isn't whether she's the person who committed the crime but whether she's the person identified in the warrant.)
tlogan | 14 hours ago
garethsprice | 16 hours ago
https://www.clearview.ai/privacy-and-requests
I have suddenly becomes very interested in New York's S1422 Biometric Privacy Act.
dawnerd | 16 hours ago
guelo | 15 hours ago
csomar | 7 hours ago
KomoD | 15 hours ago
clcaev | 12 hours ago
balderdash | 7 hours ago
giardini | 16 hours ago
indigodaddy | 15 hours ago
https://youtu.be/lPUBXN2Fd_E
mememememememo | 15 hours ago
cortesoft | 11 hours ago
However, the system uses a dragnet approach, and is checking against millions of people. If you are checking 300 million people, that 99.999% accuracy check is going to find 3,000 people, and AT LEAST 99.96% of those people are going to be innocent.
This is why we can’t have wide, automated surveillance.
internetguy | 13 hours ago
lucasfin000 | 13 hours ago
advisedwang | 13 hours ago
A judge and the warrant process are supposed to be the safeguard against police doing shady stuff (like relying on an AI hit to decide who commit a crime). But if the judges can't be bothered...
shevy-java | 11 hours ago
cortesoft | 11 hours ago
mike741 | 10 hours ago
selcuka | 11 hours ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47356968
repiret | 11 hours ago
The fundamental problem is that among the 350 million people living in the United States, there are a lot of pairs of people who look pretty darn similar. It used to be impractical to ask a question like "who in the US looks like the person in this security footage", and so as a matter of practicality, once you found someone who looks like the suspect, you probably also have other evidence, even if it's pretty weak, linking them to the crime.
But with AI, you can ask "who in the US looks like this person", and so we need to re-calibrate what it means if all you know is that someone looks like a suspect. I am of the opinion that "looks like someone," in the absence of any other evidence, is reasonable suspicion, but not probable cause, that you are the person you look like. Reasonable suspicion is enough for the police to stop you on the street and ask for your ID, but not enough to arrest you. There are other data points that alone might not even be reasonable suspicion, but could be combined with "looks like someone" to make probable cause, such as "was near the place at the time the crime happened".
AI isn't really the problem, even whether or not the AI's determination that two people look alike is valid or reviewed by a human isn't the problem. The problem is assuming that because two people look alike they must be the same person, even if you have no other evidence of them being the same person.
chaostheory | 5 hours ago
RagnarD | 2 hours ago