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Artanthos t1_je31qmn wrote

Reply to comment by ytaqebidg in BBC News: Clearview AI used nearly 1m times by US police, it tells the BBC by Gigglemind

The important part is, is it more accurate than human witnesses identifying suspects from photos.

Pretty certain this software is going to be more accurate. Human identification has always had a substantial error rate.

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bananafobe t1_je39ig8 wrote

At the same time, that perceived accuracy can mean a false positive is less likely to be questioned, compared to an eye witness whose testimony can be interrogated.

A defense attorney asking a jury to consider whether a witness's recollection seems trustworthy can appeal to a juror's experience with their own memory being unreliable. A defense attorney trying to explain a statistical probability resulting from AI coding has an uphill battle, given how many of us basically assume computers are magic.

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Artanthos t1_je5phv5 wrote

No photograph is blindly accepted. A lot of human eyes will be on both the images and the person between them being called out as a suspect and conviction.

That includes the defense attorney.

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bananafobe t1_je64ry9 wrote

And when the AI generates a face from a partially obscured or low-resolution photograph, and presents that as a scientifically accurate representation with 99.9% validity in clinical studies (or whatever), how easy is it going to be for the average public defender to explain to a jury that what they're seeing is basically a computer drawing, even though it looks like a photograph, and that 99.9% actually refers to a statistical probability about some obscure metric, and not that it's 99.9% likely that this is the right person?

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Artanthos t1_je67as6 wrote

That’s not how facial recognition works, and it’s not how the technology is used.

All this does is compare images from a camera connected to a crime with a database of publicly accessible photos. When it finds matches, it provides the match locations, e.g. Facebook.

Police investigators then use those leads to identify potential suspects.

You still have the rest of the investigation, and human eyes on the images and the potential suspects.

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Rstrofdth t1_je51lvh wrote

Then why won't the CEO testify in court to it's accuracy?

"Mr Ton-That told the BBC he does not want to testify in court to its accuracy. "

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Artanthos t1_je5o19d wrote

Very few people are going to willingly testify in court unless they are bringing an ax to grind.

If the court had a real reason for his testimony, it could compel his appearance.

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