Hacker News Reader

Comment by latexr | Hacker News Reader

While you are technically correct (which we all know from Futurama is “the best kind”), that is neither helpful nor consolation to the affected, and I wish these kinds of comments didn’t dominate the top spot in HN discussions. They’re the “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” of tech.

Yes, the system is broken even before we get to Flock (or whatever tech) but Flock makes it worse. If a bad tool is badly used to cause harm, it’s fair to criticise its existence. You can’t fix police abuse with a snap of the finger, so you need to start but taking away the tools which facilitate it.

If it were your ass which had been thrown in solitary, would you be pleading with your lawyer to “go easy on Flock. Sure, they allowed a major disruption and trauma into my life, but they’re just a tool”?

View on HN

Then the right fix is to fix the system, e.g. imposing accountability. Removing tools is just a band aid. Why is the tool bad? A tool does what it's designed to do. You can use it properly or improperly. There should be no conflation of regular civilians with supposedly trained government officers.

Yes, of course the better fix is to fix the system but one thing at a time. You’re on a giant boat that has left port years ago and a leak just sprung; you should absolutely get back to port and fix the processes that allowed the leak to open but first you have to close it.

If someone released a hammer that when held a certain way would cause your hand to explode and it kept happening over and over, the solution wouldn’t be just to tell people to hold it better, it would also be to recall the tool and fix it so the issue were less likely or impossible to occur. And if it can’t be done, then maybe the hammer shouldn’t be released again.

This “it’s just a tool, the proper solution is to rework civilisation” defence is frankly as tired as it is ignorant. The way you fix the system as a whole is via a lot of small fixes.

Then it seems that you are somehow implying that it takes many years to merely enact and impose real accountability rules. I think it's not a tech problem, or scientific problem, with unknown solution. It's a social/political problem.

I don't it's about an innocent skill issue like you imply (holding a hammer the wrong way). It's an ethical issue of bad actors in the government, together with an accountability issue of the system preventing holding those bad actors to account.

AI cameras are just one tool; there are other tools, too. Where do you draw the line for which tools deserve the removal for your kind of reason? Perhaps degun the police departments because guns also get abused? How do you decide in a principled way that AI cameras are somehow special compared to other tools?

> Then it seems that you are somehow implying that it takes many years to merely enact and impose real accountability rules.

It doesn’t have to, but historically we can observe that the longer something has been entrenched as the norm, the harder it is to change (authoritarians regimes take advantage of this too, by making it appear some things are older than they are). Which is why it’s doubly important to resist when something new with bad consequences is introduced.

> I don't it's about an innocent skill issue like you imply

There was no “skill issue” implication. If anything, the opposite is the point.

> AI cameras are just one tool; there are other tools, too.

This is just whataboutism. Yes, there are several tools which are problematic. The submission is about this one, which is why we’re discussing it. We can’t discuss everything that needs to change in every conversation. That’s called focus.

They can have their tools back after they show they can use them responcibly.

If a kid has shown themselves to be repeatedly irresponsible, when they ask for a circular saw you don't just give it to them and turn away. You make them explain what it is for and ensure they know how to safely use it. And if they start swinging it around wildly in opposition to what you said, you take it away, they are obviously incapable of using it right.

The people who say there are problems with Flock are perceived as excusing the human police officers.

The people who say there are problems with the human police officers are perceived as excusing Flock.

Who is responsible for the area inside a square, the width or the height? It is not an additive relationship.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com