China’s traffic police are using AI smart glasses to identify vehicles in seconds, reduce inspection time, and improve road safety.

    • korendian@lemmy.zip
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      2 days ago

      AI powered augmented reality making a job infinitely easier is 1984? I mean, it’s China, so everything they do could be viewed from that lens, but imo, this is legitimately a cool thing to see being used in an official capacity.

      • mrmaplebar@fedia.io
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        2 days ago

        Imagine sacrificing everybody’s privacy to “make jobs easier” for cops in an techno-authoritarian police state.

        Personally, I’m not interested in how easy cop’s jobs are, only how good the quality of people’s lives are.

        • korendian@lemmy.zip
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          2 days ago

          This might blow your mind, but the ability to readily identify a vehicle has existed since the invention of the license plate. This just speeds the process up. I truly don’t see how this is a step towards authoritarianism any more than China is already.

          • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            Yes, great point. Previously there was a limitation on how easily cops could find a reason to harass you and now there isn’t. There’s literally zero difference between those scenarios.

          • mrmaplebar@fedia.io
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            1 day ago

            If you need technology to help you read a license plate then I’m not surprised you don’t understand the ramifications of sweeping AI identification and tracking being used, especially in a country with poor civil rights protections.

            What really blows my mind is that some people have such a shallow, surface level understanding of the potential impact of technology on society.

            • korendian@lemmy.zip
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              1 day ago

              Why should we not use technology to make jobs easier? Do you expect people in a warehouse to manually type in the barcode? Or for people to manually record accounting transactions rather than using software?

              The information being scanned is publicly visible, and voluntarily submitted into a government database, for the purposes of being able to hold someone accountable when they commit a crime with their vehicle. Unless you think it’s impossible to break the law with your vehicle, I really don’t see why making it easier for the police to locate those breaking the law is a bad thing. Sure there are frivolous cases of pulling people over to harass them, but cops don’t need an AI for that.

      • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        They can identify drivers instantly, thereby reducing privacy immeasurably. I say the same about speed cameras, and if they were installed everywhere the world would be much closer to 1984. Have you read that book?

        • korendian@lemmy.zip
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          2 days ago

          How does the speed at which a vehicle identified relate to privacy? The ability to look up a vehicle by license plate has existed for a long time, this just speeds up an already existing process. Unless your proposing we abolish license plates for “privacy”, which would be extremely problematic for multiple reasons.

          • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            I have no clue how you’re missing the difference between a cop moving their head from side to side to id dozens of individuals and manually typing shit in to id one at a time.

            You are coming off like a bootlicker. And I guess you answered my question despite having tried to ignore it. You didn’t read it

              • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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                1 day ago

                Do you really think cops sit there and manually type in every license plate?

                They cannot possibly do that. That’s my entire point. I have no idea what you’re arguing about other than you’re mad someone thinks this invades privacy which it 1000% does.

                • korendian@lemmy.zip
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                  1 day ago

                  Please explain to me how using a computer to scan publicly visible information that you voluntarily submitted into a government database is a violation of privacy.

                  • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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                    1 day ago

                    Please explain how losing the ability to move through society without every cop knowing you exactly who you are isn’t. I’ll wait.

                  • ellieficent@reddthat.com
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                    1 day ago

                    Okay, from a naive POV, if this was only used for that purpose, sure it’s too bad. But there’s logging, theres extra info gathered here.

                    Scanning a plate instantly enters at a minimum, into a DB:

                    • car info
                    • location
                    • timestamp
                    • speed
                    • owner

                    Do that a multiple times to the same car across the area, every day, now you can extrapolate where they go, when they go, predict what they’re doing in the future, the route they take the likely speed they’ll go and all sorts of other privacy invading info.

                    This data could be used to accuse you of a crime, of cheating on your spouse, of speeding without a speed camera based on distance between scans, doing nefarious in their eyes things, etc.

                    Edit: and just imagine if this data leaked, which it likely would. Stalkers would love it, among theives and all sorts of other people.

                  • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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                    1 day ago

                    Actually fuck this I don’t have time for these bad faith bullshits anymore. Blocking is a lovely feature.