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Cops start using AI chatbots to write crime reports, despite concerns about racial bias in AI technology

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OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — A body camera captured every word and bark uttered by police Sergeant Matt Gilmore and his K-9 dog, Gunner, as they looked for a bunch of suspects for nearly an hour.

Normally, the Oklahoma City police sergeant would grab his laptop and spend the subsequent 30 to 45 minutes writing a search report. But this time, he tasked the AI ​​with writing the primary draft.

Using all of the sounds and radio communications picked up by a microphone attached to Gilbert’s body camera, the AI-powered tool produced a report in eight seconds.

“It was a better report than I could have written, and it was 100 percent accurate. It flowed smoothly,” Gilbert said. He even documented something he didn’t remember hearing — one other officer mentioning the colour of the automotive the suspects fled from.

The Oklahoma City Police Department is one in every of a handful experimenting with AI chatbots to create early drafts of incident reports. Officers who’ve tried the technology rave about the time it saves, while some prosecutors, cops and lawyers have concerns about the way it could change a fundamental document in the criminal justice system that plays a task in who gets prosecuted or jailed.

Built on the identical technology as ChatGPT and sold by Axon, best known for developing the Taser and as a number one U.S. supplier of body-worn cameras, it could prove to be what Gilbert describes as the subsequent “game-changer” in policing.

“They become police officers because they want to do police work, and spending half their day doing data entry is just a tedious part of the job that they hate,” said Axon founder and CEO Rick Smith, describing the brand new AI product — called Draft One — as having the “most positive response” of any product the corporate has launched.

“There are certainly some concerns now,” Smith added. In particular, he said, district attorneys handling criminal cases want to be sure that officers — not only an AI chat bot — are liable for writing reports, since they might have to testify in court about what they witnessed.

“They never want a police officer to stand up and say, ‘AI wrote that, I didn’t write that,’” Smith said.

AI technology will not be latest to police agencies, which have adopted algorithmic tools to read license plates, recognize suspects’ faces, detect the sounds of gunfire and predict where crimes might occur. Many of those applications are tied to privacy and civil rights concerns and attempts by lawmakers to establish safeguards. But the introduction of AI-generated police reports is so latest that there are few, if any, guardrails guiding their use.

Concerns about racial bias and stereotypes in society that might be woven into AI technology are only a few of the things Oklahoma City social activist Aurelius Francisco finds “deeply disturbing” about the brand new tool, which he learned about from the Associated Press.

“The fact that this technology is being used by the same company that supplies the department with Tasers is alarming enough,” said Francisco, co-founder of the Oklahoma City-based Foundation for the Liberation of Minds.

He said automating these reports “will make it easier for police to harass, surveil and inflict violence on members of the community. While that makes the job of a police officer easier, it makes the lives of black and brown people harder.”

Before the tool was tested in Oklahoma City, cops showed it to local prosecutors, who urged caution before using it in high-stakes criminal cases. For now, it’s getting used just for minor incidents that don’t result in an arrest.

“So no arrests, no crimes, no violent crimes,” said Oklahoma City Police Capt. Jason Bussert, who oversees information technology for the 1,170-officer department.

That’s not the case in one other city, Lafayette, Indiana, where Police Chief Scott Galloway told the AP that each one of his officers can use Draft One on any variety of case and that this system has been “extremely popular” because it began piloting earlier this yr.

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Or in Fort Collins, Colorado, where Sergeant Robert Younger said officers be happy to apply it to any variety of report, although they found it didn’t work well on patrols in the downtown bar district due to “overwhelming noise.”

In addition to using AI to analyze and summarize the audio recording, Axon experimented with computer vision to summarize what was “seen” in the video recording before quickly realizing the technology wasn’t ready yet.

“Given all the issues around policing, race and other identities of people involved, I think we’re going to have to do a fair amount of work before we can make that a reality,” said Smith, Axon’s CEO, describing a few of the responses tested as not “overtly racist” but otherwise insensitive.

Those experiments led Axon to focus totally on sound in the product it unveiled in April at the corporate’s annual conference for law enforcement officers.

The technology is predicated on the identical generative AI model that powers ChatGPT, created by San Francisco-based OpenAI. OpenAI is an in depth business partner of Microsoft, cloud services provider Axon.

“We use the same underlying technology as ChatGPT, but we have access to more knobs and controls than an actual ChatGPT user would have,” said Noah Spitzer-Williams, who leads Axon’s AI products. Turning off the “creativity knob” helps the model stick to the facts, so it “doesn’t embellish or hallucinate in the same way that you might find if you were just using ChatGPT,” he said.

Axon declined to say what number of police departments are using the technology. It’s not the one vendor, with startups like Policereports.ai and Truleo offering similar products. But given Axon’s deep relationships with the police departments that buy its Tasers and body cameras, experts and law enforcement officials expect AI-generated reports to develop into more common in the approaching months and years.

Before that happens, lawyer Andrew Ferguson would love to see more public discussion about the advantages and potential harms. For one, the massive language models behind AI chatbots are prone to creating false information, an issue often called hallucination, which may add convincing and hard-to-spot falsehoods to a police report.

“I worry that automation and the ease of technology will make police officers less cautious about what they write,” said Ferguson, a law professor at American University who’s working on what is anticipated to be the primary law journal article on the brand new technology.

Ferguson said the police report is very important in determining whether an officer’s suspicions “justify someone losing their liberty.” Sometimes, it’s the one testimony a judge sees, especially in misdemeanor crimes.

Ferguson said human police reports even have their flaws, however it stays an open query which one is more reliable.

For some officers who’ve tried it, it has already modified the way in which they respond to a reported crime. They talk about what is going on, so the camera higher captures what they need to record.

Bussert expects that as technology improves, officers will develop into “more and more verbose” in describing what they’ve in front of them.

After Bussert loaded the traffic stop footage into the system and pressed a button, this system generated a narrative report, written in conversational language, with dates and times—similar to a police officer would, typing them in from his notes—all based on the audio from the body camera.

“It was literally a few seconds,” Gilmore said, “and it got to the point where I thought, ‘I don’t have anything to change anymore.’”

At the top of the report, the officer must check a box indicating that the report was generated using artificial intelligence.

This article was originally published on : thegrio.com
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Crime

Prosecutors say Sean “Diddy” Combs is trying to obstruct justice by heading to prison

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NEW YORK (AP) — Sean “Diddy” Combs was trying to reach potential witnesses and influence public opinion while in prison in a bid to influence potential jurors in an upcoming sex trafficking trial, prosecutors said in a court filing during which they urged a judge to deny his latest bail request.

The government charges were filed Friday evening in federal court in Manhattan, which opposed the music mogul’s latest offer of $50 million bail. A bail hearing is scheduled for next week.

Prosecutors wrote that a review of recorded phone calls Combs made while in prison shows that he asked relations to contact potential victims and witnesses and urged them to create a “narrative” to influence the jury pool. They say he also encouraged the use of promoting strategies to influence public opinion.

“The defendant has demonstrated time and time again – even while in custody – that he’ll flagrantly and repeatedly disregard the foundations so as to improperly influence the consequence of his case. In other words, the defendant has demonstrated that he can’t be trusted to abide by the terms and conditions,” prosecutors wrote in a press release containing redactions.

Prosecutors wrote that from his behavior it might be inferred that Combs wanted to blackmail victims and witnesses into remaining silent or providing testimony helpful to his defense.

Combs’ lawyers didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

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Prosecutors said Combs, 55, began breaking the foundations almost immediately after being taken into custody Metropolitan Prison Center in Brooklyn after his September arrest.

He pleaded not guilty to the costs brought against him he abused and molested women for years with the assistance of a network of collaborators and employees, while silencing victims through blackmail and violence, including kidnapping, arson and physical beatings.

Two judges found he was a danger to the community and a flight risk.

His lawyers recently filed a 3rd bail application after rejecting two previous attempts, including a $50 million bail offer.

In their motion, they cited modified circumstances, including latest evidence, that they believed justified Combs’ release so he could higher prepare for his May 5 trial.

However, prosecutors said defense lawyers created the most recent bail proposal based on evidence provided to them by prosecutors, and the brand new material was already known to defense lawyers after they submitted previous bail applications.

In their presentation to the judge, prosecutors said Combs’ behavior in prison shows he must remain locked up.

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For example, they said, Combs asked relations to plan and execute a social media campaign around his birthday “with the intent of influencing a potential jury in this criminal proceeding.”

He encouraged his children to post a video on their social media accounts of them gathering to have a good time his birthday, he added.

He then monitored statistics on the jail, including audience engagement, and “explicitly discussed with the family how to ensure the film would have the desired impact on potential jury members in this case,” they said.

The government also alleged that Combs made clear in other conversations that he intended to anonymously publish information that he believed would help him defend against the costs.

“Defendant’s efforts to impede the fairness of these proceedings also include his persistent efforts to contact potential witnesses, including victims of violence, who could provide strong testimony against him,” prosecutors wrote.

This article was originally published on : thegrio.com
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Celebrity chef and former NFL player Tobias Dorzon is recovering from a shooting attack

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Tobias Dorzon, Tobias Dorzon shooting, Chef Tobias, Black celebrity chefs, theGrio.com

Celebrity chef and former NFL player Tobias Dorzon is recovering after being shot during an alleged robbery.

The shooting occurred on the evening of Tuesday, November 5 in Hyattsville, Maryland, when multiple suspects attempted to rob a man and woman who had just returned from dinner, based on statement from the Hyattsville Police Department.

Police said the victims were taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. Although authorities didn’t initially discover the victims, local council member Wanika Fisher revealed that Dorzon was amongst those attacked.

“I am disheartened and saddened by the news that Prince George’s County restaurant owner Tobias Dorzon was one of two people shot during an attempted robbery Tuesday evening in my neighborhood,” Fisher began in a news release.

She added that Dorzon, a Riverdale native, owns two “amazing” restaurants in Hyattsville and is considered a “dear” friend of hers.

“Such a terrible act could not have happened to a better person,” Fisher continued within the statement. “I offer my sincere condolences to him and the other victim, as well as their families and friends, and wish them both a speedy recovery. This type of senseless violence has no place in our county and county.”

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According to Fisher, Dorzon is an “extremely talented” chef who has represented Prince George’s County on the national stage and appeared on several Food Network shows. Most recently, the 39-year-old chef participated within the Food Network’s “Last Bite Hotel,” where he made it to the ultimate 4. He also hosts “Time Out with Tobias” on ESPN.

Off-screen, Dorzon currently owns and manages a company Huncho’s house and exclusive 1123 By Chef Tobias. This spring, he was named Maryland Chef of the Year, the primary honor for somebody from Prince George’s County. In 2021 helped James Harden open his restaurant Thirteen in Houston.

Before becoming a master chef, the Maryland native played within the NFL for each the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Tennessee Titans. He also had a stint playing for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers of the Canadian Football League.

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Every week after the shooting, Dorzon updated followers Instagram on his progress.

“I’m still here, thank you all for your prayers. See you soon…. Huncho,” he wrote within the caption of a post that included a screenshot of a tweet during which he admitted that, all things considered, he should be “God’s favorite.”


This article was originally published on : thegrio.com
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US bans airlines from flying to Haiti and UN suspends flights after gangs shot up planes

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PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) – The Federal Aviation Administration has banned U.S. airlines from flying to Haiti for 30 days after gangs shot three planes and the United Nations also temporarily suspended flights to Port-au-Prince on Tuesday, limiting humanitarian aid flowing into the country.

On Monday, bullets hit a Spirit Airlines plane that was about to land within the capital, injuring a flight attendant and forcing the airport to close. Photos and videos obtained by The Associated Press show bullet holes scattered throughout the plane’s interior.

On Tuesday, JetBlue and American Airlines announced that post-flight inspections showed their planes were also shot down on Monday while departing Port-au-Prince. The American suspended flights to the capital until February 12.

The shootings were a part of a wave of violence that erupted because the country tormented by gang violence swore in a brand new prime minister after a politically turbulent process.

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the agency documented 20 armed clashes and more roadblocks affecting humanitarian operations during Monday’s violence. Port-au-Prince airport will remain closed until November 18, and Dujarric said the United Nations will redirect flights to the country’s second airport, within the northern, quieter city of Cap Haïtien.

Difficult access to the epicenter of violence, Port-au-Prince, is probably going to be devastating as gangs choke life within the capital pushed Haiti to the brink of famine. Dujarric warned that cutting off flights would mean “reducing the flow of humanitarian aid and humanitarian personnel into the country.”

A convoy of 20 trucks full of food and medical supplies has already been rescheduled south, and an operation to provide money assistance to 1,000 people within the Carrefour area, where violence broke out, had to be called off.

“We are doing everything we can to ensure business continuity in this difficult environment,” he said. “We call for an end to the escalation of violence to allow safe, sustainable and unimpeded humanitarian access.”

Life in much of Haiti’s capital got here to a standstill on Tuesday after a wave of violence. Heavily armed police in armored cars checked passing public transport trucks outside the airport.

Schools were closed, as were banks and government offices. The streets, where just the day before there had been a fierce shootout with gangs and police, were eerily empty, with few people passing by apart from motorcycles with a shot man hanging on behind.

In the afternoon, the sounds of heavy gunfire continued to echo through the streets – a reminder that despite political maneuvering by Haiti’s elites and a robust push from the international community to restore peace, the country’s toxic gang group retained a robust grip on many of the Caribbean nation.

The United Nations estimates that gangs control 85% of the capital Port-au-Prince. UN supported mission run by Kenyan police to quell gang violence, scuffling with an absence of funding and staff that prompted the calls for the UN peacekeeping mission.

President Luis Abinader within the Dominican Republic, which borders Haiti, was the primary leader on the island to condemn the violence, labeling the shooting an “act of terrorism.”

On Tuesday, the transitional council established in April to restore democratic order in Haiti also condemned the violence.

“This cowardly crime, which threatens Haiti’s sovereignty and security, goals to isolate our country on the international stage. The perpetrators of those heinous acts shall be tracked down and brought to justice,” the council said in a press release.

The council has faced fierce criticism from many in Haiti who say its political struggles and corruption charges against three members has created political instability, allowing gangs to violently seize power, as happened on Monday.

This happened on the weekend when the primary shot was fired interim Prime Minister Garry Conille – he argued with the Council for a very long time. They replaced him with businessman Alix Didier Fils-Aimé, who was inaugurated on Monday surrounded by suit-wearing officials and diplomats as gangs terrorized the encompassing capital.

Neither Fils-Aimé nor Conille commented on the wave of violence.

Conille initially called the council’s move illegal, but on Tuesday he confirmed Fils-Aimé’s appointment in a post on the X social media platform.

“(I) wish him success in fulfilling this mission. At this crucial moment, unity and solidarity are essential for our country. Long live Haiti!” he wrote. Fils-Aimé promised to work with international partners to restore peace and hold long-awaited elections, a promise also made by his predecessor.

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But many Haitians, like 43-year-old Martha Jean-Pierre, don’t have any taste for political fighting, which experts say only gives gangs more freedom to further expand their control.

Jean-Pierre was amongst those that braved the streets of Port-au-Prince on Tuesday to sell bananas, carrots, cabbage and potatoes, which she carried in a basket on her head. She said she had no alternative – selling was the one way she could feed her children.

“What good is a new prime minister if there is no security, if I cannot move freely and sell my goods?” she said, nodding at her basket of vegetables. “This is my bank account. My family depends on it.”

The frustration alarmed international actors comparable to the UN and the US, who called for a peaceful resolution to the situation in Haiti.

On Tuesday, the US State Department regretted that Conille and the Council had been “unable to make progress in a constructive manner” and called on Fils-Aimé and the Council to present a transparent plan of motion with a shared vision to reduce violence and pave the way in which for an electoral path that is meant to “prevent further deadlock.”

“The urgent and immediate needs of the Haitian people compel the interim government to prioritize governance over the competing personal interests of political actors,” the statement said.

This article was originally published on : thegrio.com
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