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Comment by ge96

3 years ago

yeah something I thought about before, all of a sudden you're the most wanted person and police just complies because that's what the system says

would be crazy, probably a movie plot somewhere

I doubt it would change anything from what they do currently with police sketches; it would just be a faster, more accurate version. It's still just one piece of data they have to work from. The victim could describe the person to an AI, and it would update the 3D model on the fly.

"White Male, Curly hair, mole on face"

Generate.

"Good, but he had a larger nose, and blue eyes."

Generate.

"He was a bit more gaunt, and had some stubble."

Generate.

"Nearly there. More pronounced check bones, and make the jaw a bit softer"

Generate.

In 5 minutes or less, you could get a near exact picture of the potential criminal; something that might take up to an hour or more normally with a professional police sketch artist, and it could easily be in 3D too. There's tremendous value in that.

  • So, this is pretty much backwards from how police sketches actually work and it would likely obliterate any reliability from the system (which, as I understand, is very low already - and even worse for computer-generated imagery).

    People have bad memories and bad perception in stressful situations. They don't actually know what the person looked like; they don't have a strong model in their brains. Police sketchers use clever questioning techniques to get details about features that people wouldn't otherwise think to describe or even realize they have knowledge about. The truth is that there is an absolute limitation to the effectiveness of any facial image reconstruction, which is the limits of human memory. Adding AI to the mix can't change that, but it's extremely likely to influence the witness to describing a less accurate face with higher confidence. In other words, a disaster.

  • This implies there is such a thing as a reliable eyewitness.

    Even victims themselves are famously bad at identifying criminals.

    • There is probably some "wisdom in crowds" for identifying a suspect. For example one person usually can't estimate the number of gumballs in a jar, but some studies have shown that if you survey 100 people you get a very accurate number. Maybe you need far less than that.. 2-3 people + AI perhaps comes up with a reasonably accurate estimation of reality.

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This is basically the plot of "The Net" starring Sandra Bullock. A group of hackers steals her identity and creates a new one for her in various systems to cause the police to believe she is a wanted felon.