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
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
In it’s current form it’s good technology. It’s all fine as long as you’re chasing after crimes we all agree are bad* It’s the slippery slope I’m worried about. Just a matter of time untill this is going to be used for something malicious we don’t agree with.
*I don’t care if front seat passengers wear a seatbelt or not as long as they’re adults.
The slippery slope is what makes this not okay. It’s a completely unnecessary invasion of privacy in the guise of “safety”.
I’d love to see some statistics showing that these things are anything other than an additional tax on the drivers. This is bad for everyone and it desensitizes you and opens the door to further surveillance I’m the future.
“Slippery slope” is a common argument but usually flawed. In this case, driving is an extraordinarily regulated privilege and despite that, it still results in massive deaths and permanent life changing injury every year. In the US, car crashes are the number one cause of death for children. It’s difficult to draw a line between expanding driving enforcement to gross losses in privacy like many here are envisioning.
It also ignores the benefits to civil rights. Again, I don’t know about the UK but in the US, traffic enforcement by police is very unevenly applied. Minorities routinely get their privacy violated on pretexts while cops don’t even pay lip service to the rules.
Just as an aside, gun violence is now the leading cause of death for children in the US; vehicle collisions are now 2nd, due to gun violence increasing and vehicle collisions decreasing.
It isn’t though.
It isn’t unnecessary invasion of privacy. You have no expectation of privacy when driving around on public streets, and to say you’re allowed to break the law and use personal privacy as an excuse is absurd.
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.
It doesn’t work that well around here, cause there’s inevitably that one car that refuses to go faster than the rest of the traffic that it’s separated from. Or slows down to 10mph when the rest of the highway is stop and go, despite there being a barrier. Then someone gets rear ended because no one was expecting the lane to be going 10mph (and were on their phone), and the accident closes down the lane entirely
Basically, by me, the HOV lane is slower than traffic 90% of the time. Even in stop and go, because that lane is actually the one containing the accident causing the traffic.
Well, uhh, sounds like you could use some more traffic enforcement there. Maybe with AI and cameras ;)
I thought the advantage of carpooling was saving money on gas and car maintenance. Also, environment.
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.