
Chinese driver gets ticket for scratching his face - tobiasrenger
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-48401901
======
panarky
The reflex reaction is some combination of "privacy above all" and "our AI
overlords are running amok".

I'll take the opposite view.

Distracted driving causes 1.6 million traffic accidents a year in the US
alone, causing more than 3,000 deaths [0].

I don't have statistics for China, but 4x the population indicates maybe 6.4
million accidents and 12,000 deaths a year.

No system is completely error free. Even posting a cop on every corner to cite
distracted drivers will make mistakes.

So given the carnage, agony and grief that could be prevented, how many false
positives are acceptable?

[0] [https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/distracted-
driving](https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/distracted-driving)

~~~
6gvONxR4sf7o
In order to ensure the right to e.g. scratch your face in public, how many
false negatives are acceptable? I'll take false negatives over false
positives. More so, it's incredibly important for false positives to be easily
rectifiable.

I'm stunned to see someone arguing that ticketing someone for scratching their
face is acceptable. Just because a machine lets attempt it at scale doesn't
make it any more acceptable.

~~~
panarky
My wife was driving in the carpool lane with our infant daughter asleep in a
car seat covered by a blanket to keep the sun off of her.

A cop pulled her over for illegal use of the carpool lane. It's a completely
understandable error since the car appeared from the outside to have only one
occupant.

The point is that errors happen with all methods of enforcement. But when we
talk about automated systems, somehow the standard is set much higher, so even
one driver falsely accused is too much.

Since the tradeoff to minimizing false positives is greater injury and death,
it matters that we get it right.

~~~
ctrl-j
I bet the cop didn't give her a ticket though. He was able to assess the
situation and recognize your wife was not in violation of the law.

If this system were backed by some sort of flag-and-review system, then this
man wouldn't have received a ticket for scratching his face.

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TillE
People get so impressed by the things we can do with AI these days, they
forget that there's a basically irreducible error rate.

So you can have a system which flags cases for human review and that's fine,
but it's insanity to have fully automated decision making.

~~~
jolfdb
Humans also have an irreducible error rate.

~~~
closed
Is this true? Couldn't we run a process on top of a lot of humans, which,
assumming they are weak learners, garuantees strong learning (i.e. boosting)?

~~~
GuiA
Can you think of a man made system that has had 100% reliability over
sustained periods of time?

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RockmanX
Vision intelligence techniques are heavily used in China in relatively
critical scenarios such as the one in this news, door security systems or bank
check in systems.

This is so stupid because none of those techniques are reliable enough to be
put in such kind of scenarios.

Not mention that software developers work for gov or bank in China are usually
worse than developers in tech companies.

~~~
segfaultbuserr
> _Not mention that software developers work for gov or bank in China are
> usually worse than developers in tech companies._

It's true.

But in recent years, leading tech corporations like Alibaba are becoming the
major backers for the government's plan on big data and smart city. You are
sure the Chinese governments won't start outsourcing its mass surveillance
system to the private sector?

------
argd678
I think the I in AI is going to come to mean Idiot after a while due to the
lack of nuanced perception and just going off of broad brush strokes. It’s
akin to jumping to conclusions, we’ve just created computers that can do that
now.

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RappingBoomer
the media manufacturing consent for yet greater incursions into every detail
of our lives in the inexorable search for more governmental revenue...i love
it..

