Undeclared pools in France uncovered by AI technology (Google, Capgemini)

bbc.com

9 points·benevol··3 comments

A nice bit of Google advertising. Another public company doing government work.

Anyway, the article is light on details. Apparently 20.000 pools were discovered. How many party tents were falsely identified as pools though. How did they get their training data?

How does it work after you are identified as an illegal splasher? Do you get a fine, or does somebody actually drive over to the spot?

I know people who were in that case. Not a fine, the taxes are just updated, and from now on they have to pay for the pool.

As for the dataset, while I don't know for certain in this particular case, we have a rather accurate database of constructions in France, that could have been used (it's publicly accessible, actually that's what OpenStreetMaps used for the building footprints here), and include pools. We also have "BDOrtho", a public database of aerial photography.

These data can be seen at https://www.geoportail.gouv.fr/carte

it is quite easy to do. france also uses that to find garden house because our genius politicians found that those should be taxed. it is the french pattern when the middle class gets something we should tax it. few years ago it was gold coins that became taxeable.

art in france has a specific lower taxation so that rich people can buy it and use it as a store of value. at the time this was saved from high tax (like gold) the prime minister of france was one of the wealthiest antique dealer in the world.

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