Comment by ibudiallo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ibudiallo | Hacker News Reader

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I've been having this discussion a lot lately. Ok, let's say a crime occured and you have a hard time identifying the suspect. A colleague of yours in the precinct is walking over and sees the picture on your screen. "Wait a minute, that face looks familiar." He goes to the database and indeed sees a face that looks close enough. Now what is the next step? You don't toss the person in the police van and celebrate the conviction. Instead, you investigate.

"Where we're you that evening? do you own a outfit matching the suspect? Etc." This kid would have been quickly cleared. It's already terrifying to be questioned by the police when you are innocent. How do you think he felt when they said they had video evidence of him shoplifting. They already made up their mind.

Now replace your colleagues with an AI. Simply because you have a match does not mean you have the suspect. Just over a year ago we were discussing the same issue: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23628394

I shared an office space with a company that provided video analysis and recognition as a commercial expert witness service. (This was in The UK).

They had a system of levels of confidence they would use in their reports when identifying someone.

The highest level of confidence was achieved when a close friend or family member identified the person in the picture of video.

There were progressively lesser levels of confidence for people less close to the purported subject of the image.

They also had a system of points of similarity/difference. but they normally only used that to establish that the same subject had been observed by multiple cameras, rather than to establish the identity of the subject.

> A colleague of yours in the precinct is walking over and sees the picture on your screen. "Wait a minute, that face looks familiar." He goes to the database and indeed sees a face that looks close enough. Now what is the next step?

That depends on if the goal of those using the technology is arriving at the truth or if the goal is naming a suspect who you can reliably stick a guilty verdict on.

> Now what is the next step? You don't toss the person in the police van and celebrate the conviction. Instead, you investigate.

You overestimate the initiative and competence of the police.

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