Nipped In The Bud

Future crime?  Been there. Done that.  The adoration of empiricism has not only led to its uses in ways that inform us that “common sense” is nothing more than our own inexplicable prejudices packaged in an easy-to-use container, but its false gods as well.  No matter how long people have held dear to their assumptions, that doesn’t make them true.

But combine the good parts of empiricism with our belief that life can be reduced to binary bits and you end up with such ill-conceived notions as the Sentence-O-Matic 1000, reforms to hold people in custody longer because they’re empirically more likely to be recidivists, and the concept destroyed by Philip Dick’s 1956 sci-fi story,  Minority Report.

Of course, it’s already been done, so we’re told.

 Richard Berk, a professor of criminology and statistics at the University of Pennsylvania has developed software to predict which defendants on probation are most likely to commit murder or be murdered.

If the software proves successful, it could influence sentencing recommendations and bail amounts.

“When a person goes on probation or parole they are supervised by an officer. The question that officer has to answer is ‘what level of supervision do you provide?’ said Berk. It used to be that parole officers used the person’s criminal record, and their good judgment, to determine that level.

“This research replaces those seat-of-the-pants calculations.”

The software is already being used in Baltimore and Philadelphia, and a later version which Berk claims will predict other criminal behavior as well is ready for rollout in D,C.

“Seat of the pants calculations” sounds like a pretty poor way to run a legal system, and it is. The only worse way is to convict people of crimes that have yet to be committed because an app said so.  But Berk’s app, which was supposedly tried, hasn’t been heard from again. That doesn’t mean, however, that others aren’t hard at work creating an app of their own.

Via Quartz, a little business news from our overlord good friends at Hitachi.

Hitachi, the Japanese tech giant that makes everything from elevators to security systems, seems to have faith in the latter. It announced today (Sept. 29) that it’s developed a robust new technology that can pinpoint where and when a crime will occur. The system, called Hitachi Visualization Predictive Crime Analytics, gobbles massive amounts of data—from public transit maps, social media conversations, weather reports, and more—and uses machine learning to find patterns that humans can’t pick out.

It’s ba-aaa-ack.  The difference this time is that it’s in the hands of a tech behemoth, with tons of money to promote its product, get fancy logos and hire Matthew McConaughey to tell us that he doesn’t drive it because it’s cool.

And being smarter than the average Penn professor when it comes to selling stuff to people who don’t get the joke that there are only 10 types of people in the world, they headed off the obvious problems at the path:

Hitachi’s system, which the company plans to put into a trial run at police departments in a handful of unspecified cities starting in October, raises two major concerns: 1) How accurate will the system be, and 2) What if the system unfairly profiles and targets innocent people as criminals?

Damn fine questions. But like a psychic who tells her mark that he will meet a stranger soon, it’s nearly impossible to miss on the first point, and totally impossible to get an answer to the second.

Why not?  Because some Dominican guy is going to sell a nickel bag of weed within a one block radius of 168th Street and St. Nicholas today between 11 am and noon.  Mad empirical skillz? Hardly. It’s just what happens. So let’s toss every Dominican guy in the vicinity, because an app said so. And you can bet your bar mitzvah money that the cops will find one with a nickel bag of weed hidden somewhere on his person.

Woo hoo! It works.

Addressing the first, the company promises to make all its trial results public, so people can decide for themselves.

As if people had a clue. As long as it’s not them or someone they give a damn about, people will love it.  After all, who doesn’t love it when some other criminal gets taken down?  Safety first, provided it’s not our rights being ripped. That’s the American way.

As for the second, Hitachi execs say the system may actually reduce the amount of biased police profiling, since it equips officers with enough thorough information that they won’t need to act on mere suspicions.

They won’t toss black kids against walls just because they’re black kids anymore, but because big data says they’re black kids. Big data knows everything.  What’s fascinating about this is that it calls out what currently happens, that police act upon “mere suspicions” when violating the right to be left alone, and that’s good enough under our current regime.

If a cop can articulate an excuse (and they have a class for that at the Academy), even if the only “proof” is a cop’s word, from hitching up a waistband to the beloved furtive movement, it’s good enough to overcome any fine citizen’s right to walk down the street without being molested, ordered to prove his innocence and, should he lack the good sense not to mouth off to the cop, make it home for dinner without bleeding from various orifices.

So when the cop need not offer an observation, sniff or excuse, because Hitachi said so, and the there is no possibility of proving the cop full of shit through an eyewitness or video camera, we’re left with an insurmountable obstacle to challenging the basis for throwing our right to be left alone under the bus. You can’t cross-examine big data.

But is this any different than the prior claims that Minority Report is ready for prime time?  Oh yes. Yes it is. Because a major tech player like Hitachi has the bucks to sell this in one minute segments between scenes on every Shonda Rhimes show, on every flavor of CSI Des Moines, to the well-intended but fearful viewers who want only to sleep well at night.

H/T Jim Tyre

39 thoughts on “Nipped In The Bud

  1. Nigel Declan

    Every flavor of CSI Des Moines? I guess that they are bringing the whole crew and trying to take down that notorious Great Iowa Baseball Confederacy once and for all.

      1. TinMan

        Careful there SHG…there’s readin’ folk from Iowa all up in here.
        Readin’ folk from Des Moines even…

  2. phroggie

    OK, you got a hearty chuckle out of me at “CSI: Des Moines,” mainly because the criminal would be caught and convicted before the first commercial break. Hard to pad that out to an hour-long timeslot.

    Your analysis of big data’s precog capabilities are spot on. Until it carves out a red ball lights up in a convincing manner naming an Hitachi executive, I see little chance of this ever being exposed for what it is destined to be: an indisputable electronic warrant-printing machine.

      1. phroggie

        I’m going to go out on a shaky limb here, but I suspect that it’s regarding the Hitachi only requiring one minute to satisfy a viewer during Gray’s Anatomy commercials. Vroom.

      2. Patrick Maupin

        Hmm, which bad reference has not yet been re-referenced?

        Was it something I saw on TV, or wait… Is there more?

  3. Frank

    Also, Issac Asimov’s “All The Troubles Of The World” for a similar perspective, including false arrest of a “suspect.”

  4. Grum

    The Lincoln MKC, perchance? Don’t see many of these over here, where the Range Rover is made.
    I’ve been enjoying your blog for months now, especially your follow-ups where you expect people to think.
    I’m not entirely sure I’ll escape unscathed, but I guess you lawyerly guys do get taught rhetoric, so “begging the question” ought to stick out. I try to make computers do things for a living, and they are pretty much immune to that sort of thing.
    Couple of beauts:
    “software to predict ”
    “How accurate will the system be”
    “Predict” and “accurate” are as loaded as hell, and people swallow ’em whole.
    Counter argument: Someone wins a lottery every week. can your software predict the numbers for me before I buy a ticket?
    Since Hitachi are demonstratedly not selling that, which would actually be usefull, calling them out for instead doing something actively harmful is a good thing.
    Yours, expecting a harsh rejoinder, but happy to keep on reading.
    Cheers, from Scotland.

    1. SHG Post author

      Ironically, Range Rover is owned by Tata Motors of India these days, along with the Jag-u-ar. Shame about that.

      1. Grum

        Ah well, I shall return to lurking, content that Tata (they are still made in Solihull BTW) saved me from a savaging.

  5. Patrick Maupin

    You wouldn’t want to buy predictive technology from someone who wasn’t both smart enough to create it and rational enough to thoroughly test and qualify it.

    So assume, arguendo a team smart and rational enough to create predictive technology and then to correctly ascertain its effectiveness.

    If it works well, this rational team will keep quiet and make a killing on the stock markets (especially if they have the resources of a major international corporation). If it doesn’t work all that well, they will figure out a different way to monetize it. What better way than selling services into a sector where confirmation bias will continually “prove” that it is working fine?

    1. SHG Post author

      Are you kidding? I’m buying every Hitachi call I can get my hands on. I never underestimate an opportunity to prey upon confirmation bias.

    2. Grum

      Partick, in the context we are discussing, you cannot, and never will be able to buy predictive techonology. Smart does not come into it. No-one and/or nothing can predict the future. Rational is the antithesis of this notion.

      1. Patrick Maupin

        So the technology that told me that someone would come out of the woodwork and answer my comment in a way that requires a “Whoosh!” was just guessing?

        Bummer.

          1. SHG Post author

            Hey, if it’s anybody’s echo chamber, it’s mine. Patrick has no more dibs on it than you do. And by the way, I’m on your side of this one.

            1. Grum

              My apologies for snark. I consider this a serious forum which deals with serious stuff; your OP was dead on, and worth a supportive comment or two. Too important for smartassery.

            2. SHG Post author

              There’s always room for smartassery in every serious discussion. That’s what separate us from the prosecutors.

            3. Patrick Maupin

              In this instance, I was actually being perfectly serious, albeit in an admittedly snarky way. Maybe I should have spelled it out more carefully, but if they’re selling this technology, it’s because it doesn’t work, and I reach that conclusion without ever having to consider or address Grum’s assertion that it couldn’t possibly work.

      1. j a higginbotham

        Well, are you going to announce it with some kind of drum and bugle corps? That would bea nuts.

        1. SHG Post author

          So you bring up, out of nowhere, announcing it with a drum and bugle corps, and then say that would be nuts. I really hope you’re laughing now at what you’ve just written, because that’s as loony as can be.

          And the answer to your question is no, I’m not. If no one figures it out, it goes to the grave with me.

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