Surprise Of The Week: Algorithm That Predicts Crimes Before They Happen Does Not Work! Was A Bad Idea!

A central Florida sheriff built an algorithm meant to predict which people in his jurisdiction were likely to commit a crime in the future.

In a sweeping six-month investigation published this week, the Tampa Bay Times reported that the algorithm relied on questionable data and arbitrary decisions and led to the serial harassment of people without any evidence of specific crimes.

According to the report, former sheriff's office employees said officers went to the homes of people singled out by the algorithm, charged them with zoning violations, and made arrests for any reason they could. Those charges were fed back into the algorithm.

The report shines a light on the pitfalls of algorithm-driven policing and casts doubt on AI-powered tools meant to fight crime.

Full story here.

I think everybody in the sane part of the room agrees we’ve got to make some serious changes to policing in our country and these *furiously checks notes* were no it. Seriously, hats off for taking the police reform we needed in the completely wrong direction. Talk about zigging where we thought you were going to zag. Why limit yourself to overhauling training programs for new officers, reallocating funds so that officers who respond to certain situations are trained for those situations, and all in all taking a big ol’ look in the mirror when instead, you can just decide who commits crimes before they commit them?

Think about it: a futuristic algorithm that decides who is about to commit a crime off of questionable data, feeds into itself, and leads officers to make arrests for any reasons they can conjure up- what could go wrong? Everything you dumb fucks. What a stupid fucking use of your, and everybody else’s time. Great news for the families you harassed too, it’s not like those folks are going to be able to unlive that experience, just as unlikely as you being able to rebuild that trust. Look at the silver lining though, at least the program lead to a decrease in violent crime..

[…] according to a six-month investigation published this week by the Tampa Bay Times, the high-tech tool deployed by the Pasco Sheriff's Office didn't lead to a reduction in violent crime — instead, 21 families singled out by the algorithm said they were routinely harassed by deputies, even when there was no evidence of a specific crime.

Oh ok, good, so it’s not even working a little bit. But hey, I guess we’ve set an extraordinarily low bar for policing, and more specifically profiling in this country.

I’m a little confused what the sheriff’s department thought was going to happen by replicating the entire plot of Minority Report. Did you only watch the first half? Do you still believe, to this day, that Tom Cruise was the bad guy in that film? Please tell me what you did to miss the entire fucking point of the movie. It’s unbelievable. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll excuse stretching AI to its limit when we’re in uncharted territory. However, when there’s a fairly well known piece of media from the past 20 years warning about the inaccuracy of, wait for it, a precrime program- you’ve got no fucking cards left to play, pal. 

Also, I snagged this off wikipedia to make you all feel better.

Spielberg described his ideas for the film's technology to Roger Ebert before the movie's release:

I wanted all the toys to come true someday. I want there to be a transportation system that doesn't emit toxins into the atmosphere. And the newspaper that updates itself ... The Internet is watching us now. If they want to. They can see what sites you visit. In the future, television will be watching us, and customizing itself to what it knows about us. The thrilling thing is, that will make us feel we're part of the medium. The scary thing is, we'll lose our right to privacy. An ad will appear in the air around us, talking directly to us.[14]

Alexa play despa… shit. 

We’re fucked guys. We already knew that, but one of the few nice parts of that quote is that Spielberg left out the whole precog policing bit. Presumedly because he didn’t think we’d get to that level of policing- because who would do that? But now here we are. Florida has helped us accomplish all of the terrible things that Spielberg envisioned. The train and newspaper sound nice, but it also seems like we’re doing everything in our power to make sure the world ends before we get them.