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Comment Re:Who watches the watchers? (Score 4, Insightful) 165

It is possible to put laws into place that require how public-private partnerships work. It would be an imposition upon Flock and upon the police. And that is just fine, and as it should be.

Law enforcement contracting to the private sector should not be allowed to be a bypass of our rights.

Comment Re:Sounds like... (Score 1) 97

The only place I see Al in the legal profession making sense is to do basic caselaw research, where it can cite the sources and the references upstream and downstream to those sources. The lawyer should be responsible to review the claimed caselaw citations to determine the merit of their support for the argument that the lawyer is making, and to pick the particular citations to use that are the strongest for the particular case.

Likewise the same sort of search but inverted, for one's opponent's most likely arguments or rebuttals might be performed, again with the lawyer doing the review based on the citations that the Al tool provided.

There was a television series in the 2010s called Person of Interest where the premise was that one of the main characters had managed to achieve Al, but in order to satisfy legal constraints, the Al was only allowed to spit-out a single phrase about a person, rather than any detail of any sort. It was up to the limited number of persons associated with the Al to figure out why this 'person of interest' had been referenced, whether they were the perpetrator, the victim, a witness, or someone who would suffer downstream effects. While soft science fiction, and pretty clearly taking inspiration from the older series Quantum Leap in having to figure out why they were there, the concept had some merit as to how Al should really be used. It should be treated as untrusted, it should be treated as requiring thorough review. It should be treated as another tool available, but no more trustable or authoritative than any other, and arguably a bit less trustable, a bit less authoritative.

Comment Re:Functionally illiterate is the new norm (Score 1) 97

Except that in basically all of the examples that you cite, the transition was from one proven technology slowly into another technology that was at least approaching some degree of maturity by the time it it mass-market adoption.

In most of those examples. early adopters were nearly all ultrawealthy who were using it for themselves. Those who weren't incredibly rich were technology-enthusiasts of some fashion or another. Those groups initially worked-out most of the showstopper-problems with the technology before widespread adoption, and in many of those industries either compatibility or outright law added extra constraint over time.

AI for the masses has taken a different development path. It's not ready and is misbehaving, to the detriment of many. "Hallucinations" should not be tolerated at this scale of deployment.

Comment Who watches the watchers? (Score 4, Insightful) 165

Or as it was put nearly two millennia ago, "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"

This is why systems like this require human oversight. Arguably if there's a judicial review process for allowing searches, then this system needs to be required to use that process. With a system containing precinct, local court district, municipal, county, state, and federal district jurisdictions, the nature of setting up proper permissions alone should be a mandatory herculean effort, probably the most difficult part of the entire system.

Without such a system requiring judicial oversight to confirm that searches are authorized, all we have is a further slide into a police-state.

Comment Re:Golly that kettle is dark! (Score 2) 90

The thing here is that there isn't "Apple". There is Apple-the-parent-company, and Apple UK. From the perspective of law, Apple-the-parent is a supplier to Apple UK. Apple UK will have been ordered not to disclose information, including its suppliers. Therefore nothing restricts Apple-the-parent other than its contract as a supplier to Apple UK.

Yes I'm aware that sounds odd, but I deal with these situations fairly regularly (although am not any form of lawyer, this is absolutely not legal advice etc.). Contracts between international entities are common, and Apple US would not be in breach of US law but would be in breach of contract and would place Apple UK in breach of UK law by doing so.

Am not taking the UK government's side on this - I personally think the order is nuts and yep, I'm British. I'm just trying to show why the relationship would be more complex. Legally Apple US could disclose of course. However I'll bet you it has a supplier contract with Apple UK, a legally distinct entity, that says something like "the terms of this agreement will be bound by UK law". Hence it would be in breach of contract, and that could place Apple UK at legal risk in the UK.

Comment The first 'big box' game - Sabre Wulf (Score 3) 39

I remember the very first big box game in the UK. It was Sabre Wulf, from Ultimate Play The Game. At the time, games were around £5.99 to £7.99 - Sabre Wulf was the first £9.99 game in the UK and they part justified it by having a bigger box.

Since everything at that point came on cassette, this was annoying as hell because you couldn't fit it into your cassette holders that you definitely, definitely had as an 8 bit gamer in the UK. No stranger to later price gouging, Ultimate became Rare and was bought by Nintendo. I still think Nintendo is lord of the overpricing, at least these days (in ye olden times there was the NeoGeo charging £300 for a game back in the early 1980s. I think PC Engine charged a fortune too. But absolutely nobody had these in the UK).

Comment British news is slightly different (Score 4, Interesting) 105

I'm British, and have been following this from the other side of the story. In the UK it's more fragmented - this year England is up, but Scotland and Wales are down and in some cases quite significantly. Wales seems to have taken a hell of a hit in reading for instance.

It's better news in maths and science but we're still behind where we were five-seven years ago except for science. Definitely a mixed bag, though all improvements are welcome of course.

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