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
Photos flagged by the AI are then sent to a person for review.
If an offense was correctly identified, the driver is then sent either a notice of warning or intended prosecution, depending on the severity of the offense.
The AI just “identifying” offenses is the easy part. It would be interesting to know whether the AI indeed correctly identified 300 offenses or if the person reviewing the AI’s images acted on 300 offenses. That’s potentially a huge difference and would have been the relevant part of the news.
The system we use in NL is called “monocam”. A few years ago it caught 95% of all offenders.
This means that AI had at most 5% false negatives.
I wonder if they have improved the system in the mean time.
Nobody cares about false negatives. As long as the number isn’t something so massive that the system is completely useless false negatives in an automatic system are not a problem.
What are the false positives? Every single false positive is a gross injustice. If you can’t come up with a number for that, then you haven’t even evaluated your system.
The system works with AI signaling phone usage by driving.
Then a human will verify the photo.
AI is used to respect people’s privacy.
The combination of the AI detection+human review leads to a 5% false negative rate, and most probably 0% false positive.
This means that the AI missed at most 5% positives, but probably less because of the human reviewer not being 100% sure there was an offense.
Look, I’m not saying it’s a bad system. Maybe it’s great. “Most probably 0%” is meaningless though. If all you’ve got is gut feelings about it, then you don’t know anything about it. Humans make mistakes in the best of circumstances, and they get way, way worse when you’re telling them that they’re evaluating something that’s already pretty reliable. You need to know it’s not giving false positive, not have a warm fuzzy feeling about it.
Again, I don’t know if someone else has already done that. Maybe they have. I don’t live in the Netherlands. I don’t trust it until I see the numbers that matter though, and the more numbers that don’t matter I see without the ones that do, the less I trust it.
The fine contains a letter, a picture and payment information. If the person really wasn’t using their phone, they can file a complaint and the fine will be dismissed. Seems pretty simple to me.
However, I have not heard any complaints about it in the news and an embarrassing amount of fines has been given for this offense.
For a post on a site like this that kind of anecdote is plenty to add to a conversation, and it does actually make me feel a tiny bit better about the whole thing, but when you lead with statistics you’re implying a level of research and knowledge that goes beyond just anecdotal. It’s not really fair to you or any of us, but using the numbers that sound good to avoid using the ones that reveal flaws is one of the most popular ways for marketing teams and governments to deceive people. You should always be skeptical of that kind of thing.
Heh. Heh heh. You think that you can… file a complaint, and get a fine dismissed just like that. Heh heh heh. God, you’re naive. Or stupid. Or a paid propagandist. Or just plain rich enough for your reaction to a fine to be ‘meh’.
Criminality is predicated on convenience. If it’s easy for an authority to throw out fines and hard for the populace to dismiss those fines, guess what’s going to happen? There’s going to be fines applied that shouldn’t have been, but that the people who are getting fined literally can’t put in the effort to get dismissed. And that’s not justice in the slightest. ‘Innocent until proven guilty’, you troll. Heard that phrase before??
Just wow.
I bet you do not live in The Netherlands. We have a standardized process to complain against a fine.
If the picture doesn’t prove with certainty that you were holding a phone, complain to the address in the letter or just don’t pay the €359 fine and talk to a judge about it.
but digging out that info would involve journalism and possibly reporting something the cops wouldn’t like! We all know how that goes.
Yeah that’s a shame, would be really interested to know those numbers.
Expansion of the surveillance state, you go uk.
The DEA in the US has surveillance on every highway exit. If you drive on an interstate, you are logged.
Maybe in high population areas, most exits don’t have any infrastructure nearby. Hell a lot barely have signs and just dump you into not much more than a back road.
There is also a disturbing “community policing” (SURVEILLANCE) program being pushed by cops called FUSUS that allows cops to look at the cameras and their recordings of businesses, schools, churches etc. Their network of cop-viewable private surveillance cameras is already large in the USA and starting to expand to the UK. I found out when they asked to put one of their boxes in my company’s network to have access to our cameras. We told them “NO.”
This means Big Brother is really watching now, literally watching us on (potentially) any camera in public.
Wait really? Via cameras?
yea, in fact most toll booths are camera operated up north here now, they click a picture of the plate then mail you the toll bill + added expenses for the mail in system. Annoying af but it’s either that or get EZ pass(or not use the turnpike).
it flashes multiple times on the way through so I’m sure it grabs a front picture as well
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.
This is a weird phenomenon. Feels a bit like how focusing on “welfare queens” / “dole bludgers” can pave the way for similar privacy erosion (and welfare cuts) even though its a tiny percentage of the people. Seems a short hop away from “if you’ve got nothing to hide…”
Except in this case being a poor driver actively puts others at risk rather than just being a drain on tax money.
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…
You know the best way to not have absolute power corrupt? Not have absolute power.
If you collect this data there is degree of probability that eventually it will be abused. If you don’t collect this data there is zero chance.
Some > none
Good government is about assuming the worse and decided if you are willing to endure that. If the absolute worse humans you can imagine were put into office how much bad can they do?
Surely the ultimate come away from that is will not ok with people breaking the law and we’re not ok with AI taking people’s jobs. There is no conflict here
So you think most people like the idea of a surveillance state automaticly enforcing it’s every whim with perfect efficiency?
I’m pretty sure that’s something pretty much universally disliked
You don’t know many authoritarian.
Course, they only think this should apply to everyone elae.
I don’t think I said that did I
I just wish they would have one where I live to fine all the people using the HOV lane who aren’t supposed to be
Then we watch the numbers plummet and see there’s only actually 5% of people using the lane and finally see how useless the hiv lane is so we can just make it a regular third lane.
The HOV lane is supposed to look empty. If it was packed full of cars, carpooling wouldn’t have any advantage because you wouldn’t go any faster.
I am not pro seat belt laws. It is your life and you should be able to throw it away if you want.
Not wearing a seatbelt reduces the security of others. If you want to throw it away, that’s a different matter and should not be handled through seat belt laws.
Please show me the multiple double blind studies that you used to arrive at that conclusion.
Source: I fucking made it up.
But isn’t it simple logic? Maybe a driver pulls the wheel a bit too hard, due to having no belt loses balance, boom, he hits someone.
It might be “logical” but I prefer evidence-based policy. Especially when we are restricting individual rights.
What if it was something you cared about? What if I don’t know your favorite form of music was going to be criminalized, would you accept “logical” as justification?
That is a ridiculous straw man arguement and the fact you came up with it basically indicates you have no actual interest in a proper debate.
We are taking not wearing a seat belt against restricting music.
One of them has real obvious reasons for restricting it decreases everybody else’s safety by you not wearing a seatbelt.
There is no public safety consideration for banning a particular genre of music.
It is appropriate to impose limited freedom restrictions in cases where not doing so would result in potential issues for other people.
For example you are not allowed to play excessively loud music after a certain amount of time because that affects other people. But music is not banned outright and a genre of music would never be banned outright because that would be obviously ridiculous.
If you’re going to have this conversation at least be reasonable.
Answering questions is easier than attacking questions.
People not wearing seatbelts unnecessarily binds medical personal and costs money in healthcare when there is an accident.
There is no rational reason of why someone should refuse to wear a seatbelt beyond “I just don’t want to”. It’s different from more complex matters like being fat or not going to the dentist or whatever. And yes, there is actual research that shows that some behaviour is more complex than other behaviour.
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.
Can’t believe people still have the audacity to text while driving. I prefer reading a nice relaxing book.
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?”.
Or painting a nice landscape
inattentive driving should be considered gross negligence
I’m more concerned about error rates and false accusations
Doesn’t it say that each image is sent to a human for review before any charges are laid? Might not be the case forever, but at least for now it’s actually a human who ultimately decides whether or not to prosecute a driver.
That’s the important part for me. As long as the whole process isn’t automated I’m fine with it.
This has always been the case for road cameras in the UK from the start from when we first had speed cameras introduced, before they are sent out they are (supposed to be) reviewed by a person first to check for false positives.
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?
Leaving traffic safety to human police, discretion often means racist biases and outcomes.
Computers end up racist as well.
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.
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.
The UK has never seen a dystopian nightmare they didn’t rush to embrace.
There is a strong authoritarian undercurrent in England.
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)
Calling an image recognition system a robot enforcing the law is such a stretch you’re going to pull a muscle.
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”
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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
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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
But how is that different or worse from a human sitting at the side of the road and writing down number plates for example?
But the law isn’t enforced by robots the law is enforced by humans. All that’s happening here is that the process of capturing transgressions has been automated. I don’t see how that’s a problem.
As long as humans are still part of the sentencing process, and they are, then functionally there’s no difference, if a mistake is being made it will be rectified at that time. From the process point of view there isn’t really any difference between being caught by an automated AI camera and being caught by a traffic cop.
Although completely reasonable, I fear that your conclusion is inaccessible for most folks.
And as a pedestrian, I’m all for a system that’s capable of reducing distracted driving.
You have never had to dispute one of those tickets I assume.
Almost a decade ago I got one in the mail for a city that is about 9 hours away from my house. I am going thru the dispute process and being told repeatedly that “I am tired of people claiming that it wasn’t them” with me suggesting that if their system worked they would most likely get fewer calls. Pure luck I noticed that the date is the exact date my daughter was born and thus the only way I could have been in that city is if I had somehow left my wife while she was in labor and managed to move my car 9 hours away. Once I pointed that out and that I could send them the birth certificate they gave up.
The problem with these systems is that they are trusted 100% and it becomes on the regular person to prove their innocence. Which is the exact opposite of what the relationship should be. If I get issued a ticket, it should be on the state to produce the evidence, not on me to get lucky.
If you read the article it makes it clear it wouldn’t get that far.
It goes to human operator who looks at the picture and says whether or not they can actually see a violation on the image. So it wouldn’t get as far as an official sanction so you wouldn’t have to go through that process.
I am sorry am I talking to myself? I just gave you a literal example of this not working.
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”
Sounds like youd support precrime too. Stop licking boots
What the hell is precrime?
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…
Worked for Gattaca. GINI pretty much only exists because of it.
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.
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)
Yes does the AI automatically send every taxi through or is it only when they are on the phone. Has the AI ever seen a taxi driver who’s not on the phone in order to check this?
“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?”
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I think deaths jumped a bit post COVID but I don’t think they are skyrocketing. Do you have a source?
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.
Exactly right. Anytime the police or other government authorities want to put more surveillance into our lives, the only answer should be HELL NO.
He’ll yea use machines to strip people of their freedom and privacy in exchange for “safety” and “security”, that could never go wrong
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.
The same laws that have been used to record police are the same being used here.
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.
You know the Constitution has no power in the UK where this camera is right? Not that I’m opposed to it.
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.
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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
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I think the fact that car deaths are skyrocketing in the US and the UK is even more absurd since modern cars are supposedly “safer” with all of their safety tech.
SUV vs. Bicycle: cyclist dead.
Not for UK, cyclists is the only category which stay the same between 2022/2021.
Then using UK, one of the countries with the lowest deathtoll on the roads in Europe, beside the US, is a bit of a stretch.
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.
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.
No they wouldn’t. You are telling me you could stop someone on the motorway instantly. You think a stationary cop at ground level would be able to spot a phone held below the window and have the reaction times to intiate a persute?
I never suggested any of this…alls I said was a cop at the side of the road could stop a car. I didnt say we couldnt have a copper parked up on a bridge as lookout or use these cameras.
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.
100% agree. It flags infractions, you have people verify what was being flagged, due course follows.
There is a name for that sort, the safer the item is the more reckless the person becomes.
Fuck ai and cameras and uk.
FUCK CAMERAS. THAT’S WHY I VOTED BREXIT. SO I CAN TEXT AND DRIVE, NOT LIKE THESE BAGUETTE LOVING SISSIES
Monitor my internet and tell me what I can do harder daddy
What?
I hope it’s sarcasm
It is sarcasm. Britsbongs are too indebted to hang on sync and they’d rather sniff nitrous under a bridge
My main problem with this is, that this becomes like the huge online behemoths like youtube etc. I think most people have seen incidents where youtube cancelled a channel or applied copyright incorrectly, and getting a human to review things is next to impossible. The reason is clear, the sheer amount of content breaching the rules is too big to cost efficiently deal with by humans.
One camera catching 300 people in 72 hours. We don’t see how many it triggered, how many were reviewed and found to be false positives.
The problem is going to be if a whole police force takes it up, or it goes national. The amount of hits generated would be far beyond the ability to confirm with humans. I see it going a similar way to youtube. They just let the AI fine people. You report it as wrong, so they send your petition to another AI that pretends to be human and denies you again. The only way to clear things up is to take it to court. But, now the court system is being flooded so they deny people the right to a court case and the fixed penalties will be automatically applied.
This is the dystopia I fear. Actually catching people committing driving crimes? I don’t have a problem with that. Aside from maybe the increasing number of driving crimes coupled with the knowledge these cameras exist could lead to less concentration while people make sure they’re sitting upright, looking attentive, eyes straight ahead hands at 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock. Did I indicate for that lane change back there? I guess that remains to be seen.
Haha, that’s a scary thought. But not unreasonable. Fine first and let the recipient proof they are not at fault,fighting through a series of AI entities.
“You’re through to the AI’s AI Manager how may I reject your complaint?”
Really great dialogue and discourse going on in this post. Thank you everyone for your opinions and viewpoints. Definitely have a lot to think over on my current stance. Exactly what I was missing lately from the social media I’ve been consuming (actual discussions with merits both sides hold).
Meanwhile in New Orleans
https://www.fox8live.com/2023/07/26/nopd-use-facial-recognition-leads-zero-arrests-nine-months/
Am I the only one who considers the text on the camera car (“HIGHWAY MAINTENANCE”) a bad joke?
This will get shut down the first time some politician gets caught receiving road head and the pictures leak.
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.
Mellow greetings, citizen. This idea was a running gag in Demolition Man.
Enhance your calm, John Spartan.
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.
It pains me to point out that it’s more like ~30 years ago. Rest in peace Jonathan Brandis.
