Comment by CrendKing
21 hours ago
But Flock gives police overconfidence to commit actions instead of having due diligence. It is like the best student in your classroom tells you 2 + 2 = 5, and you naturally feel compelled to believe him, even there is clear evidence against the claim.
This is also comparable to self-driving car: Waymo's system has achieve the level of "less error than human on average" long time ago, but they are still only doing slow expansion. Why? Because when AI is involved, human naturally expect them to be almost 100% correct, not just barely better than human, otherwise why bother use AI (and all the troubles to legalize for AI) in the first place? So in this case, I guess the police just blindly trust the AI being 99.99% correct.
Flock isn’t an “AI” though? It doesn’t put together a case and say “yes, this is the criminal”. It’s not a crime-solving AI.
It’s a camera system, and data can be queried by police. They have to search for something. So the cops searched for a vehicle matching the description in the general area, seemed to take the first one, and called it a day.
That’s not an AI-uncanny-valley. That’s the equivalent of (pre-flock/cameras) looking at vehicle registration list and assuming the one at the top of the list must be it.
The automation-trust is a legitimate concern but it’s not applicable here.
I don't know the details on how Flock is internally designed, but I suppose AI is at least involved in the image recognition and correlation, at least to this scale. I also don't know exactly why Flock misidentifies Issacs' car in this case, because I don't find it in the article or the interview, but I assume it is due to a mislabeling of the plate number or the car damage imagery, which is related to AI. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Flock didn't misidentify Isaacs' car in this case. It correctly identified that her car was vaguely near the accident, and the police incorrectly concluded that it was the one involved in the accident.
Correct, but what's more, there is a lack of accountability issue that's part of it. When people are not held accountable for the screw ups, then processes don't or are very slow to change. That's how you can just call it a day, regardless of the harm done to innocent citizens.
Ahem, reality would like a word about flock not being AI.
https://cybernews.com/privacy/flock-ai-os-investigate/
Flock is not an AI. That they have AI features on certain products does not mean "Flock" is an AI. That's the fallacy of composition.
Flock does have AI components (this one seems LLM based). Basically every ANPR system will also use some level of AI.
Also, on "reality would like a word". Why not just speak normally instead of using what seems like a high-school grade comeback?
The main Flock related issue here is that officers treat results that come out of the systems as gospel. The same thing has happened with face recognition systems. There is also the broader issue of access controls to Flock, 5A, and whether places should be building up a technology so powerful (surveillance infrastructure can easily be used for evil).
Software developers approving AI PRs without reading them: This is the way the world works now. Get with the times.
Police approving AI PRs without reading them: This is the way the world works now. Get with the times.
> It is like the best student in your classroom tells you 2 + 2 = 5, and you naturally feel compelled to believe him, even there is clear evidence against the claim.
Yes, but it is still your fault. “I am dumb and I was deceived” is no valid defense, least of all for a police officer.
I'm not saying the police has no fault. Using AI assist without secondary verification is never good idea, at least not in 2026. But you can't argue Flock the technology itself, and especially Flock the company, are totally innocent, just like you can't say the "guns are just tools like hammer, it only depends on who uses them", and the gun industry.
> But you can't argue Flock the technology itself, and especially Flock the company, are totally innocent
For the sake of argument, let’s suppose that Flock is 100% evil/guilty/blameworthy in this case. Even in that case, two things are still true:
A) Flock has no authority to arrest anyone B) Flock has no authority over the police
The buck has to stop somewhere. It’s counterproductive to focus on what Flock did, compared to what the police did. And I say that as someone who is not a fan of Flock.
> the police has no fault
Gross lack of due diligence: it has full fault.
Untrained officials: graver systemic fault.
> company, are totally innocent
How clear is the uncertainty of the output?
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So next time start your first post with that, otherwise you lead us on this wild goose chase only to find that you mostly agree, it's a foundational part of discourse.
> It is like the best student in your classroom tells you 2 + 2 = 5, and you naturally feel compelled to believe him
Closer analogy: The dumbest student in a class tells you 2 + 2 = 5 and you believe them.
Even more apt analogy: You're the dumbest student in the class, the second-dumbest student tells you 2 + 2 = 5, but you lack the critical thinking skills necessary to know whether that student is smart or not so you just believe them.
Cops regularly frame people and get caught only because of cameras that the cops are too stupid/incompetent to disable or avoid. This goes both ways.
> It is like the best student in your classroom tells you 2 + 2 = 5, and you naturally feel compelled to believe him, even there is clear evidence against the claim.
It’s more like normal people don’t know that 97.8% accurate isn’t 100% - despite how good of a score that would be on a test.
Law enforcement is predominantly made up of normal people.
You might see where this is going.
I would say US law enforcement are made up of mostly abnormal people with lower intellegences, higher aggressivness, and a propensity to lie and deceive. They tend to push actual normal people out for not playing ball with their own corruption.
The number one demograph for domestic violence and abuse are cops, they are not just a randomly selected group of people that chanced into law enforcement as a career.