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Comment by ggambetta | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised by the early reactions here. Looking at the picture in the article, of a driver texting while the passenger holds the wheel (!!!), my first reaction is "OH YES PLEASE GET THESE INCREDIBLY IRRESPONSIBLE PEOPLE OFF THE STREETS ASAP".

I don't want to die because some idiot is texting while driving. Whether these idiots are caught by a human looking attentively 24/7 or by a high-speed camera with an AI flagging possible violations and being reviewed by a human makes zero difference to me.

What exactly is wrong or dystopian here? AI bad? Cameras bad?

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It's basically a slippery slope argument. Which is not completely unfair, police have a terrible track record when it comes to using technological means responsibly.

Police are using a bunch of technologies irresponsibly. Why not advocate for better oversight of police overall instead of trying to block them from using specific technologies?

An alternative perspective:

If a group has repeatedly shown that they will use their tools and power to oppress others, why give them tools that increase their odds of doing so?

But what’s the slippery slope here? If we use AI effectively to catch texters, next we’ll… effectively enforce other traffic laws?

And police are already using technology in actually nefarious ways - technology that never had a positive use like this.

People here are concerned for the exact same reason they're concerned about on-device image scanning, they're not pro-pedophilia they're worried about the future uses of this capability.

Fair, but I think we’re ought to be much more concerned by surveillance of private messages on a communication app than we ought to be of surveillance of people’s activities on a public road. It ought to be understood that you might be observed while driving.

> What exactly is wrong or dystopian here?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you are probably under the impression that this won't catch you doing something illegal? You might be surprised how extensive the laws are (and we add to them all the time), and many driving behaviors that you think are harmless are in fact technically illegal.

If, for example, we start sending people tickets every time they fail to stop before the stop line on the road, or don't come to a complete stop, we're going to need to install much larger mailboxes. Or people who speed 1 mph over the limit for 1 second. Or stay in the left lane a little too long while someone is waiting to pass. The possibilities are endless.

>What exactly is wrong or dystopian here? AI bad? Cameras bad?

Well no, not by itself. The way I look at it, this is a precedence. It works, and there is not a lot of resistance. That's huge. And there will be next steps to this.

It doesn't take too many steps from here to a distopian surveillance state.

Not necessarily agreeing or disagreeing but I think the key complaint boils down to the level of granular invasiveness that this gives the government.

The fact that a govt couldn’t reasonably do this at this scale without computer vision being as advanced as it is just adds more AI skepticism flavor to the argument.

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