Police in England and Wales told to halt AI use in court statements (ft.com)
47 points by nmstoker 2 hours ago
embedding-shape 38 minutes ago
> [...] he had intervened at forces that were deploying commercially available AI tools before they had been properly assessed [...] “All forces have got a good policy on the use of Copilot,” Murray said. “All forces will have a policy that says, ‘Check everything that it produces’.”
Not only are they using AI before they've properly assessed them, they also end up using Copilot which must be one of the worse AIs currently available, probably because of existing Microsoft relations. And on top of all that, they hope to be able to rely on "Please review the outputs" which obviously isn't an actual solution here, of course people will get complacent and throw stuff over the wall whenever they can.
Aurornis 4 minutes ago
> “All forces will have a policy that says, ‘Check everything that it produces’.”
Everyone I talk to (including outside of tech) is going through this phase at their companies. It’s not working.
Checking the output seems like a simple request, but the question becomes: Check against what? If the police are making a document that sources from another report that another officer used AI to produce from their notes which were also run through AI and on and on, an inconsistency that leaks in at a previous step will check out when someone reviews the output against the inputs.
We’re all also discovering that many people’s idea of reviewing the output is to skim it and verify that it looks convincing enough. Checking facts is hard and takes time. These people are using AI because they want to work less, not to give themselves extra work.
kerabatsos 17 minutes ago
The mindset must be that if you use AI (which I happen to advocate for) you are also responsible for the output, if you use the output publicly. AI is obviously very powerful if used responsibly - the human is responsible for it once it is used - however it’s used.
bluefirebrand 18 minutes ago
> on top of all that, they hope to be able to rely on "Please review the outputs" which obviously isn't an actual solution here, of course people will get complacent and throw stuff over the wall whenever they can.
This is honestly the fundamental problem of AI as I see it
When we offload our work to a different person we can calibrate our expectations to our past experiences with that person. With AI the experience is not very consistent. To use AI effectively you basically should treat it as a low trust, brand new coworker every single time you use it
That doesn't really scale, so people have two choices: be constantly hyper vigilant for mistakes the AI makes, or become complacent and trust it more than they should
People rightly point out that humans make mistakes too, not just AI. But humans have a pretty manageable cap on the amount of output they can produce. One human can pretty thoroughly review the outputs of a small team of other humans
One human can't possibly thoroughly review the volume of output that an LLM they are prompting can produce
gdulli 2 minutes ago
Yeah, it's like declaring self driving safe because people are told to remain alert with their hands on the wheel, ready to take over in an instant. It's a charade.
echelon_musk 39 minutes ago
At nearly £500 a year is an FT subscription worth it? Am I going to get invaluable stock tips that will cover the sub?!
cjs_ac 29 minutes ago
Speaking as someone who subscribed earlier this year, the Lex column does provide subtle stock tips, but my real interest in it is the fact that it’s aimed at people who have a financial interest in accurate news, so the reporting doesn’t veer off into pushing moralistic narratives like other UK news sources.
Aurornis 3 minutes ago
The price is set for people who will expense it to their employers.
phyalow 26 minutes ago
I was granted a free subscription to the FT when I was at grad school 9 years ago, surprisingly it still continues to work to this day…
layer8 23 minutes ago
How much did you pay for grad school? ;)
zipy124 19 minutes ago
You can usually find a way to get it for free or cheaper through a library, other institution or your employer if working in the financial sector or education.
lloydatkinson 34 minutes ago
tgv 15 minutes ago
I never thought AI would be the fork in the road to Idiocracy. Can you believe that the people whose evidence and testimony in court means so much, value The Great Hallucinator over hand work? They give a few nice sounding options for using AI ("checking child porn"), but it of course won't end there. They already started. People are so fucking lazy.