Police in England installed an AI camera system along a major road. It caught almost 300 drivers in its first 3 days.::An AI camera system installed along a major road in England caught 300 offenses in its first 3 days.There were 180 seat belt offenses and 117 mobile phone

  • Meowoem@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    I love threads like these because it really shows how flexible opinions are, post about ai surveillance state and everyone is against it but post about car drivers getting fined for not wearing a seatbelt and everyone loves it.

    • realharo@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Seatbelts I don’t really care about, because with that people mostly just affect themselves (or others in the same car), but for other infractions it makes sense.

      The real issue is whether you can trust that the data will only be used for its intended purpose, as right now there are basically no good mechanisms to prevent misuse.

      If we had cameras where you could somehow guarantee that - no access for reason other than stated, only when flagged or otherwise by court order, all access to footage logged with the audit log being publicly available, independent system flagging suspicious accesses to any footage, etc. - it wouldn’t be too bad.

      Compared to all the private cameras that exist in cars these days…

  • ikidd@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The UK has never seen a dystopian nightmare they didn’t rush to embrace.

  • Boiglenoight@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Is the freedom to drive without feeling like you’re being watched more important than the prevention of texting while driving?

    During my commute, it’s common to see people looking at their phones. I don’t know what the effect is without statistics, but seeing an accident along the way is a usual occurrence.

    • Agent641@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Can’t believe people still have the audacity to text while driving. I prefer reading a nice relaxing book.

      • ours@lemmy.film
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        1 year ago

        I’ve seen a bus driver do this. No seriously. And it was the safer option. It was on one of those long desert stretches of road in Australia. No turns, interceptions, obstacles, or urbanization, and very little traffic for hundreds of miles.

        It was better for the driver to read a book than to zone off bored near death. You could see incoming traffic miles away anyway so a few glances from time to time were enough.

        It was funny when I spotted him and asked him “Are you seriously reading a book while driving?”.

    • EndlessApollo@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Yes, obviously. Ffs how is this post so full of authoritarian assholes who think more law enforcement (not even done by real people mind you, but by a machine with no sense of nuance or anything) is the solution to anything other than strengthening a fascist government?

      • Boiglenoight@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        It’s not authoritarian to use technology to improve people’s lives. If you’re in a public place, you’re subject to being photographed by any number of circumstances both human and machine. How to balance it so that it isn’t abused is a valid argument to have, but disregarding tech because it could run amok isn’t a reason to forsake it altogether.

    • surewhynotlem@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      No. Your freedom to feel feelings is your problem. If you feel like you’re not being observed right now, your feeling is already wrong.

  • EndlessApollo@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    ITT a bunch of people who have never read an ounce of sci fi (or got entirely the wrong message and think law being enforced by robots is a good thing)

    • CrayonRosary@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Calling an image recognition system a robot enforcing the law is such a stretch you’re going to pull a muscle.

      • EndlessApollo@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        It’s going to disproportionately target minorities. ML* isn’t some wonderful impartial observer, it’s subject to all the same biases as the people who made it. Whether the people at the end of the process are impartial or not barely matters either imo, they’re going to get the biased results of the ML looking for criminals so it’s still going to be a flawed system even if the human element is OK. Ffs please don’t support this kind of dystopian shit, Idk how it’s not completely obvious how horrifying this stuff is

        *what people call AI is not intelligent at all. It uses machine learning, the same process as chatbots and autocorrect. AI is a buzzword used by tech bros who are desperate to “invest in the future”

          • EndlessApollo@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Face recognition data sets and the like tend to be pretty heavily skewed, they usually have a lot more white people than poc. You can see this when ML image filters turn black people into white people or literal gorillas. Unless the data set properly represents a super diverse set of people (and tbh probably even if it does), there’s going to be a lot of race based false positives/negatives

              • EndlessApollo@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                That might be the case tbh, but either way that would be bad and discriminatory. I might just be overthinking it, it might not actually be that bad, but I know discrimination like that is super common when it comes to how recognition-based ML is trained

        • CrayonRosary@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          The image recognition system detects a cell phone being used and snaps a photo, records the plate number, etc. How exactly does that lead to racism?

    • atzanteol@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      According to Sci-fi organ transplants will lead to the creation of monsters who will kill us all for “tampering in God’s domain.”

      Maybe fiction isn’t the best way to determine policy…

    • ShittyRedditWasBetter@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I for one base ALL my global policy on sci Fi novels 🤦‍♂️

      Since the writers are on strike we can have them just write the entire legal code as the writers of black window are actually taken seriously beyond nerds for once.

  • madge@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I work in an adjacent industry and got a sales pitch from a company offering a similar service. They said that they get the AI to flag the images and then people working from home confirm - and they said it’s a lot of people with disabilities/etc getting extra cash that way.

    This was about six months ago and I asked them, “there’s a lot of bias in AI training datasets - was a diverse dataset used or was it trained mostly on people who look like me (note: I’m white)?” and they completely dodged the question…

    (this is definitely a different company as I am not in England)

    • RoyalEngineering@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      “Hookay thanks for the presentation fellas, but lemme ask ya: Was your model trained only on iPhones or was a diverse palette of plastic Android phones from the last 15 years also taken into account?”

    • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I think deaths jumped a bit post COVID but I don’t think they are skyrocketing. Do you have a source?

      • letsgocrazy@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I looked it up. They aren’t skyrocketing.

        The numbers dropped due to lockdown, then bounced up and are stable.

        I hate this cult of negativity - just make up how everything is getting worse in order to hand more power to the government.

        The casual and bovine l way it all happen is disgusting.

    • EndlessApollo@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      He’ll yea use machines to strip people of their freedom and privacy in exchange for “safety” and “security”, that could never go wrong

      • xT1TANx@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I understand your pov but I feel it’s misplaced. You are in public in a vehicle. You are in public on a side walk. The same laws that have been used to record police are the same being used here. You have no expectation of privacy in public and if you are seen or recorded breaking a law that is on you.

          • xT1TANx@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I don’t think you understand my point. It’s been made clear the First Amendment applies to filming anyone, including police, in public. Any policies that try to bypass that will be destroyed in court. Those same rules apply to all of us as well.

            We can absolutely be recorded in public.

            • NuPNuA@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              You know the Constitution has no power in the UK where this camera is right? Not that I’m opposed to it.

              • xT1TANx@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                The post I responded to indicated the US and UK. Of course I know that we never invaded and subjugated the English. Clearly I was talking about the US, so ya got me. Pat yourself on the back.

        • EndlessApollo@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Just because someone is in public doesn’t mean that they need to be under 24/7 surveillance by big brother. Isn’t England already infested with security cameras? The US is pretty lousy with them in some places and if I knew they were actively watching me I’d make a habit of breaking them, not praise them for helping to overpolice every square inch of the country

          • xT1TANx@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Again, if you can be seen in public you already are. Anyone is a witness to your crimes.

    • SouthEndSunset@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Yup, and some of these are quite serious. But a cop at the side of the road could stop these people instantly. These people won’t find out that they have broke the law for two weeks. Or they could just kill themselves/someone else/both half a mile up the road.

      • NuPNuA@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        It’s about detering behaviours, if people know these cameras are out there, they will be less likely to act like that to begin with as the risk of consequences is now higher.

    • ours@lemmy.film
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      1 year ago

      For reference, in Switzerland deaths/major injuries from traffic accidents have steadily dropped since the '70s. Thanks to, as you mention, better car safety tech.

      But there has also been a great number of speed cameras and lower alcohol tolerance. Oh and new laws with income-relative fines, temporary to permanent loss of driving license, and even jail for the worst driving offenses probably cooling the jets of even the wealthier road maniacs.

    • Voli@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      There is a name for that sort, the safer the item is the more reckless the person becomes.

    • graphite@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      100% agree. It flags infractions, you have people verify what was being flagged, due course follows.

  • Treczoks@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Am I the only one who considers the text on the camera car (“HIGHWAY MAINTENANCE”) a bad joke?

  • Tolstoshev@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    This will get shut down the first time some politician gets caught receiving road head and the pictures leak.

  • hark@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I’m surprised car companies haven’t already partnered with governments to have the vehicles themselves snitch on the occupants. Why install these camera systems all over the place when the vehicles themselves collect ridiculous amounts of data with greater accuracy? I’m sure the car companies would love the additional revenue stream and the governments would love the greater surveillance capabilities.

    • TheCraiggers@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      Probably because they wouldn’t see a dime of revenue from this. It would be a new law that just says they have to do it. At best, they would be allowed to pass the costs to customers somehow, likely through our plate registrations at the DMV.

      It’s basically a no win for the car companies. Lots of ill will, increased chance of litigation, increased costs for building cars, all for nothing.

      In fact, I bet the car companies lobbyists are the reason we don’t have this already.

  • TheBiscuitLout@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Cornwall outsourced mobile speed cameras to a private company a while ago, and realised that they, and the company, we’re making money hand over just, and due to Cornwall’s number of tourists, much of that money was coming from outside Cornwall. This feels like a development of that idea. Ethics and everything aside, if they can find a way to roll this out further and increase the flow of money into the councils coffers, they will

  • Asifall@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I know this is gonna be a hot take, but I think there’s a huge opportunity to increase road safety using automation. Where I live the police have largely stopped bothering with minor traffic offenses due to problems with racial profiling, which solves the racial profiling issue but means that it’s very hard to drive so poorly you get pulled over.

    It seems like simply ticketing people automatically for driving over the speed limit or running stop signs would be dirt cheap and massively improve driving standards. You wouldn’t even need to do facial recognition or anything, just use the same systems that are already in place for toll by plate to fine the vehicle owner.

    • randon31415@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I remember an opening to Seaquest DSV where the captain was riding his motorcycle to the base and a camera pops out of the ground, scans his plate, and he receives an email with the fine when he reached his destination. No other human involved, and this show was ~20 years ago.

  • GuStJaR@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Sorry, what did the police do and how many people did they catch in how much time :/

    • realharo@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      That ship has sailed a long time ago. Tons of cars on the roads now have built-in cameras. Cameras that are ultimately under centralized control of the car manufacturer.

      And then there are all the outdoor cameras that homes and businesses have.