Steve Jones was hundreds of miles away in Maidstone arranging family funeral at time of alleged offence

This is what happens when AI is tasked with surveillance.

Although AI involvement is not mentioned in the article, this quote might implicate that AI recognition could have been used:

“It’s got the incorrect date of birth, then it’s got a description of me, which says I have hat hair, which I found quite odd,” he said.

The problem with all that is that the whole process seems to be automated and that it hardly can be interrupted with human intervention.

Jones is also concerned the same thing might happen to somebody else who may not have the capacity to challenge the fine.

This indeed is concerning, as it already is challenging sometimes to deal with authorities, even when AI is not involved at all.

  • nicerdicer@feddit.orgOP
    431·
    4 days ago

    The problem is not the mix up, because of the same name or a similar appearence, but rather that the processing done by the authorities with support of AI cannot be intervened by humans. Imagine you can resolve something only after you have been fined or, worst case scenario, booked into jail.

    • Denjin@feddit.uk
      11·
      2 days ago

      Look, I hate the intrusion into our lives of unaccountable computer systems as anyone. But this article has nothing to do with facial recognition or AI. It’s a bureaucratic fuck up.

      Manchester City Council don’t even own or operate any facial recognition equipment at this point. Greater Manchester Police do, but they’ve only purchased it a month or so ago (after this story even unfolded) and they’ve only deployed it a couple of times so far and only at mass events. And Greater Manchester Police aren’t the issuing body of the fixed penalty notice.

      Conflating genuine human and computer errors with AI just makes us look like crazy people shouting at clouds.

      • unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de
        251·
        3 days ago

        he said, “and then they had to go and find the guy’s camera evidence and that took a few days, and then eventually they realised that it wasn’t me”.

        You think someone in a city 200 miles away just watched video footage and was like “Yes i know that guy, his name is Steve Jones” ???

        No obviously the fuck not. They clearly use facial recognition to identify people and it picked the wrong guy.

        • CouldntCareBear@sh.itjust.works
          423·
          3 days ago

          AI isn’t mentioned, facial recognition isn’t mentioned. You’re just making up stuff for FUD.

          Most of these tickets are on the spot fines. They probably just spoke with the offender who gave his name.

            • CouldntCareBear@sh.itjust.works
              29·
              3 days ago

              The footage is not used to identify the offender it is used in evidence by a court. It works like this, a litter enforcement officer sees you drop litter, they get it on video as evidence, and they approach you and issue a fine. You give them your name, that’s how they get it. If you don’t give your name, it’s a criminal matter and they call the actual police.

              • Jhex@lemmy.world
                4·
                3 days ago

                well that is clearly not what happened here as the person fined was not the person filmed

                so again I ask you, how do you think the fine wound upein the hands of a person that was not even there?

                • CouldntCareBear@sh.itjust.works
                  3·
                  3 days ago

                  They took the offender’s name and DOB, looked up the name on whatever database they prefer - probably the electoral register, and then sent the fine to that address WITHOUT checking the DOB matched.

                  There no need to insert face recognition or ai to explain an administrative error.

                  And for the record I’m not defending ai or face recognition. I think, probably like most people on lemmy, that we need to be vigilant against digital surveillance and the authoritarianism it could very easily enable.

                  However, this is almost certainly not AI or face recognition and railing against it is wasting energy that could be better spent elsewhere. Instead of contributing to a cause it’s undermining it. It’s FUD.