Page 2 - aruba-today-20240827

A2 UP FRONT
Tuesday 27 augusT 2024
Police officers are starting to use AI chatbots to write crime reports.

Will they hold up in court?

scholar Andrew Ferguson
Continued from Front would like to see more of
a public discussion about
Oklahoma City's police de- the benefits and potential
partment is one of a hand- harms. For one thing, the
ful to experiment with AI large language models be-
chatbots to produce the hind AI chatbots are prone
first drafts of incident re- to making up false infor-
ports. Police officers who've mation, a problem known
tried it are enthused about as hallucination that could
the time-saving technolo- add convincing and hard-
gy, while some prosecutors, to-notice falsehoods into a
police watchdogs and le- police report.
gal scholars have concerns "I am concerned that auto-
about how it could alter a mation and the ease of the
fundamental document in technology would cause
the criminal justice system police officers to be sort of
that plays a role in who gets less careful with their writ-
prosecuted or imprisoned. ing," said Ferguson, a law
Built with the same tech- professor at American Uni-
nology as ChatGPT and versity working on what's
sold by Axon, best known expected to be the first
for developing the Taser Draft One, an AI powered software that creates police reports from body cam audio, is law review article on the
demonstrated on a screen at Oklahoma City police headquarters on Friday, May 31, 2024 in
and as the dominant U.S. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. emerging technology.
supplier of body cameras, Associated Press Ferguson said a police
it could become what Gil- report is important in de-
bert describes as another But the introduction of AI- Capt. Jason Bussert, who in the product unveiled in termining whether an of-
"game changer" for police generated police reports is handles information tech- April during its annual com- ficer's suspicion "justifies
work. so new that there are few, nology for the 1,170-officer pany conference for police someone's loss of liberty."
"They become police offic- if any, guardrails guiding department. officials. It's sometimes the only tes-
ers because they want to their use. That's not the case in an- The technology relies on timony a judge sees, es-
do police work, and spend- Concerns about society's other city, Lafayette, Indi- the same generative AI pecially for misdemeanor
ing half their day doing racial biases and prejudic- ana, where Police Chief model that powers Chat- crimes.
data entry is just a tedious es getting built into AI tech- Scott Galloway told the AP GPT, made by San Francis- Human-generated police
part of the job that they nology are just part of what that all of his officers can co-based OpenAI. OpenAI reports also have flaws,
hate," said Axon's founder Oklahoma City community use Draft One on any kind is a close business partner Ferguson said, but it's an
and CEO Rick Smith, de- activist aurelius francisco of case and it's been "in- with Microsoft, which is Ax- open question as to which
scribing the new AI prod- finds "deeply troubling" credibly popular" since the on's cloud computing pro- is more reliable.
uct — called Draft One — about the new tool, which pilot began earlier this year. vider. For some officers who've
as having the "most positive he learned about from The Or in Fort Collins, Colorado, "We use the same under- tried it, it is already chang-
reaction" of any product Associated Press."The fact where police Sgt. Robert lying technology as Chat- ing how they respond to
the company has intro- that the technology is be- Younger said officers are GPT, but we have access a reported crime. They're
duced. ing used by the same com- free to use it on any type to more knobs and dials narrating what's happen-
"Now, there's certainly con- pany that provides Tasers to of report, though they dis- than an actual ChatGPT ing so the camera better
cerns," Smith added. In the department is alarming covered it doesn't work user would have," said captures what they'd want
particular, he said district enough," said francisco, a well on patrols of the city's Noah Spitzer-Williams, who to put in writing.
attorneys prosecuting a co-founder of the Founda- downtown bar district be- manages Axon's AI prod- As the technology catches
criminal case want to be tion for Liberating Minds in cause of an "overwhelm- ucts. Turning down the on, Bussert expects offic-
sure that police officers — Oklahoma City. ing amount of noise."Along "creativity dial" helps the ers will become "more and
not solely an AI chatbot — He said automating those with using AI to analyze and model stick to facts so that more verbal" in describing
are responsible for author- reports will "ease the po- summarize the audio re- it "doesn't embellish or hal- what's in front of them.
ing their reports because lice's ability to harass, sur- cording, Axon experiment- lucinate in the same ways After Bussert loaded the
they may have to testify in veil and inflict violence ed with computer vision to that you would find if you video of a traffic stop into
court about what they wit- on community members. summarize what's "seen" in were just using ChatGPT on the system and pressed a
nessed. While making the cop's job the video footage, before its own," he said. button, the program pro-
"They never want to get an easier, it makes Black and quickly realizing that the Axon won't say how many duced a narrative-style re-
officer on the stand who brown people's lives hard- technology was not ready. police departments are us- port in conversational lan-
says, well, 'The AI wrote er." "Given all the sensitivities ing the technology. It's not guage that included dates
that, I didn't,'" Smith said. Before trying out the tool in around policing, around the only vendor, with star- and times, just like an offic-
AI technology is not new Oklahoma City, police offi- race and other identities tups like Policereports.ai er would have typed from
to police agencies, which cials showed it to local pros- of people involved, that's and Truleo pitching similar his notes, all based on au-
have adopted algorithmic ecutors who advised some an area where I think we're products. But given Axon's dio from the body camera.
tools to read license plates, caution before using it on going to have to do some deep relationship with po- "It was literally seconds," Gil-
recognize suspects' faces, high-stakes criminal cases. real work before we would lice departments that buy more said, "and it was done
detect gunshot sounds and For now, it's only used for introduce it," said Smith, its Tasers and body cam- to the point where I was
predict where crimes might minor incident reports that the Axon CEO, describing eras, experts and police of- like, 'I don't have anything
occur. Many of those ap- don't lead to someone get- some of the tested respons- ficials expect AI-generated to change.'"
plications have come with ting arrested. es as not "overtly racist" but reports to become more At the end of the report,
privacy and civil rights con- "So no arrests, no felonies, insensitive in other ways. ubiquitous in the coming the officer must click a box
cerns and attempts by leg- no violent crimes," said Those experiments led Axon months and years. that indicates it was gener-
islators to set safeguards. Oklahoma City police to focus squarely on audio Before that happens, legal ated with the use of AI.q