Hacker News Reader

Comment by danso | Hacker News Reader

This system seems dumber and simpler than I had imagined it would be. I had guessed the face recognition system would be linked to each citizen's cellphone (i.e. GPS coordinates). How else could it be so certain of any given person's identity, in densely and highly populated areas?

View on HN

> How else could it be so certain of any given person's identity, in densely and highly populated areas?

I'm pretty sure this is a fake story planted to hype some technology. Facial recognition cant identify in the wild one person among several million possible candidates with enough certainty for sending out fines.

All existing AI (and I mean all, even AlphaGo Zero, etc) is overhyped. With all of these systems the devil is always in the details and it's never as good as presented in a blog post or video. Often, even its creators don't realize about all of its shortcomings.

On the other hand, would be pretty easy to fool then by leaving your phone at home.

That would leave the average citizen at a huge inconvenience, given how much of modern life is tied to smartphone usage. Doesn’t seem worth it just so you can go on a jaywalking/red-light-running spree.

I've managed to survive a few hours without my smartphone.

I now also live in an American city made for cars, not humans, so "jaywalking" is basically required to make any sane progress. So for grocery shopping, it'd take that trade-off.

If you leave your phone at home the automated number plate reader you pass on the way out of your village/suburb/estate stops and locks your electric vehicle and you wait inside for 3 hours. A police tow truck takes you to court. Two days later you're releases by the [AI] judges clerk ... you decide to always carry your government ID enabled mobile device in future ...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com