Hacker News Reader

Comment by panarky | Hacker News Reader

The reflex reaction is some combination of "privacy above all" and "our AI overlords are running amok".

I'll take the opposite view.

Distracted driving causes 1.6 million traffic accidents a year in the US alone, causing more than 3,000 deaths [0].

I don't have statistics for China, but 4x the population indicates maybe 6.4 million accidents and 12,000 deaths a year.

No system is completely error free. Even posting a cop on every corner to cite distracted drivers will make mistakes.

So given the carnage, agony and grief that could be prevented, how many false positives are acceptable?

[0] https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/distracted-driving

View on HN

In order to ensure the right to e.g. scratch your face in public, how many false negatives are acceptable? I'll take false negatives over false positives. More so, it's incredibly important for false positives to be easily rectifiable.

I'm stunned to see someone arguing that ticketing someone for scratching their face is acceptable. Just because a machine lets attempt it at scale doesn't make it any more acceptable.

My wife was driving in the carpool lane with our infant daughter asleep in a car seat covered by a blanket to keep the sun off of her.

A cop pulled her over for illegal use of the carpool lane. It's a completely understandable error since the car appeared from the outside to have only one occupant.

The point is that errors happen with all methods of enforcement. But when we talk about automated systems, somehow the standard is set much higher, so even one driver falsely accused is too much.

Since the tradeoff to minimizing false positives is greater injury and death, it matters that we get it right.

I bet the cop didn't give her a ticket though. He was able to assess the situation and recognize your wife was not in violation of the law.

If this system were backed by some sort of flag-and-review system, then this man wouldn't have received a ticket for scratching his face.

The bar isn't higher for machines. If anything it seems lower. If the cop had given your wife a ticket after seeing that your daughter was there, that would be crazy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com