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Revealed: a California city is training AI to spot homeless encampments (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

108 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Last July, San Jose issued an open invitation to technology companies to mount cameras on a municipal vehicle that began periodically driving through the city’s district 10 in December, collecting footage of the streets and public spaces. The images are fed into computer vision software and used to train the companies’ algorithms to detect the unwanted objects, according to interviews and documents the Guardian obtained through public records requests.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (3 children)

You’re ignoring the fact that using such a failure-prone system to initiate legal proceedings against a citizen is ABSOLUTELY going to overload an already overloaded system. And that’s not even going into the fact that it puts an unjust burden on those falsely accused, or the fact that it’s targeting a segment of the population that’s a lot more likely to go “fuck it, I don’t care, how could things possibly get worse” (read: serious depression, PTSD, other neurodivergences that often correlate with being unhoused). This is by-design.

This is an all-around grade-A shit policy. It’s also a policy designed to treat the symptom instead of the cause. It will make the streets around San Jose look a bit nicer, and in doing so it will harm a lot of people.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

I think it's a stupid policy but I don't see how any of this is applicable. If the AI identifies an encampment, it's going to be police that come and scare them off. This isn't like a red light camera where you get mailed a ticket because there's no address to send a ticket to and the AI isn't going to be able to identify individuals occupying a tent.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

I don’t think the idea is to bring criminal proceedings against people. Not sure what they do in San Jose but in cities I’ve lived, homeless people are essentially immune to fines or criminal charges because police know they can’t/wont pay anything. So they go force them to move and throw away their belongings if they can’t or don’t take them in time, but do not arrest or ticket these people.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I mean I’m not ignoring those facts. I prefaced by saying I don’t know much about jurisprudence.

Thanks for providing some insight though.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

For what it’s worth, I didn’t intend to come off stabby or dismissive

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

No problem.

Appreciate you clarifying. Have a nice day random person.