RealTechNews.com - Independent Tech

Comments on this Item:

Gotta disagree Bill. While it is nice to see computers being put to use, I have to say that this way is wrong. Profiling, assuming it works as well as it does in medicine, will fail miserably and do nothing but erode civil rights.

Medical science isnt. Its a guessing game. You take symptoms and you guess based on the most likely scenario. I ran a fever for 6 weeks while my doctor tried to treat a viral infection. That was my only symptom and his diagnosis would of been right 99% of the time. In this case, it was a heart valve infection.

Being wrong 1% of the time is not acceptable for determing if someone has commited a crime that might cost them their life.

# posted by Pyrial 5:47 AM

What do you mean by "some folk are finally getting around to putting computers to one of their best uses"? Bill, show me how applying a computer program with "artificial intelligence" is a better (cheaper, more effective) solution than hiring competent people? Just last week you opined that Government never worked - what makes the Government purchase of an AI Criminal Profiling system a valid exercise of governmental authority?

Why do we need a computer to perform the simple correlations that investigators ought to be able to perform as a part of their every-day duties? Is it because of the misguided policy that limits the IQ of our police?

Don't hire people with a too high an IQ to be a cop. The role of a police officer in society is a very boring, routine, mundane, unchallenging type of position, and someone with any gray matter between their ears would rapidly become disenchanted and leave that type of work for something more exciting. See, Bob Jordan & New London, Ct. Police Dept.

Sorry, "the computer selected you as the suspect" is a recipe for the systematic abrogation of Fourth Amendment protections, e.g. The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated; and no warrant shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

This policy shows how foolish the whole idea of using databases for profiling is - everybody knows GIGO (*Garbage In, Garbage Out) and here we have a plan to use morons to collect, select and input data (all with precision and accuracy beyond what their IQ predicts they are capable of performing). What sophistry! Let's apply brainpower to crime solving by selecting good, bright individuals who can observe and innovate at the crime scene, not by applying brainpower from a distance by algorithm.

The investigation of notorious dope-fiend Rush reveals that he explained his anti-immigration policy to the maid that he bought his Dilaudid from. Does it take an AI system to correlate, tabulate, process, and regress the data to the mean to convict Rush? Buying Dilaudid from your maid -- does it get any more Republican?

There's nothing good about drug use. We know it. It destroys individuals. It destroys families. Drug use destroys societies. Drug use, some might say, is destroying this country. And we have laws against selling drugs, pushing drugs, using drugs, importing drugs. And the laws are good because we know what happens to people in societies and neighborhoods, which become consumed by them. And so if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up.

Rush LimbaUGH, 10/5/95

Tell us, Bill - how would an AI system work to put away this sick puppy any better than the current system? I might support it if you can show me how LimbaUGH would be convicted and 'sent up" by an algorithm.

# posted by Anonymous 6:06 AM

Angry anonymous people aside, hasn't this been going on since the seventies? The annual crime reports that are issued by the FBI are doing a lot of this already. So is it that that database can be accessed by more police departments?

Again, Liberals come out in the side of the perpetrators. By making the inane extrapolation that the computer would accuse an innocent person, you reveal your lack of intelligence.

What the database can do is show similarities between crimes in other jurisdictions/states, and provide a detective with forensic evidence he/she may not have had in their own investigation.

As for profiling - a person who walks into a bank with a loaded shotgun fits the profile of a BANK ROBBER. But hey let's give him the benefit of the doubt, shall we?

As for the medical side - had the doctor used this tool perhaps a more thorough investigation into the other possibilities would have increased the likelyhood of a proper first time diagnosis.

This site is supposed to be about technology, not politics. If you like the technology or not, please share your thoughts. The rest of you need to leave the angry liberal stuff in the car.

# posted by WRM 7:08 AM

Wow, let's see if I can do three in one without crossing Alice's "No Politics" boundary....

Pyrial - It's actually "The Practice of Medicine." What doctors and researchers do is add new data to the ever expanding database. And they'll keep practicing because they'll never get it right, or maybe more accurately, complete. The problem is that no one person could possibly assimilate the volumes of collected --and emerging-- knowledge with any hope of being either timely or accurate. Did your doctor have all of the possible symptoms of Endocarditis at hand? Where they presented? (Did you know that can happen because of a bad tooth?) A computer could grind away (pardon the pun) at the database to weed out all possibilties and then pose additional questions based on overlapping diagnosis better than any doctor could --and quicker. I'm not saying they replace doctors, just that they've been severely underutilized as a tool.

Todd - Most of your statement can be answered by my reply to Pyrial. By the way, most studies will tell you that monotonous jobs are handled best by -either- very intelligent people or very dull people. The latter group simply becomes absorbed in the flow while the former compartmentalizes it. I'm not sure why you brought up Limbaugh here but you obviously have no idea of what a prescription drug dependency is all about. It's not a partisan problem. John F. Kennedy had a humogous addiction to pain killers. It's actually a doctor problem. A lazy doctor problem in most cases. I had two aunts, one of whom died from it, and a cousin affected by such a person. Wait... The doctor was Italian. So is my mother's side of the family. I think you hit on it! It's an Italian problem.

WRM - Thanks.

# posted by Bill 8:02 AM

Yep, should listen to Alice. :p

Also, I am not a liberal and I am not siding with criminals. And my post was from a technology stand-point. I just didnt agree on what was a good use of technology.

I will end with that to prevent the impending flamewar...

:p

# posted by Pyrial 9:33 AM

I have to weigh in on this one.

The data you put in is equal to the data you get out. Computers are a tool, not big brother. If I have unusual symptoms I for sure want my doctor to access a database and network my illness. If a crime is committed, I for sure want the police, FBI, or whoever, to use the deepest and farthest reaching database to spot patterns and compare to other crimes.

Computers don't make people dull or smart. They are just a tool, and I think, a great tool. The political arena is where the controls and balances are created to limit the abuses of computer wielding people. We are a nation of laws.

Will, from Lafayette

# posted by Anonymous 9:35 AM

Wow, do a lot of people have this wrong. What the system does is compare records between different cases. For example, two years ago there was a crime that involved a blue Camaro that only had a partial plate - then a new case comes along and the suspect drives a Blue Camaro and the partial plate is a match - it's this type of linking that they're talking about, of course it doesn't prove anything - the system just makes links that then the detective needs to follow up on. I seriously doubt this is true AI.

I worked on a similar system (SIUSS) and all it does is compare phone numbers, car records, etc. and suggest that two crimes may be related somehow. Yes, it's more complicated then I've just described it, but it's certainly not going to be violating anyone's rights on its own.

# posted by Anonymous 11:09 AM

Post a Comment