Last July, San Jose issued an open invitation to technology companies to mount cameras on a municipal vehicle that began periodically driving through the city’s district 10 in December, collecting footage of the streets and public spaces. The images are fed into computer vision software and used to train the companies’ algorithms to detect the unwanted objects, according to interviews and documents the Guardian obtained through public records requests.
Hate my state.
By all means, find a better one.
Uf, this is not a great response. That citizen should stay and add their valuable voice to calls and demands for improvement.
Someone who hates California sounds like a useless fucking Californian already–lacking “value.”
Not… Everyone can afford to pick up everything and move or they may have other factors like job and family keeping them there
Yeah im trying my damnest but this state is meant to keep people poor.
Real shit? No fucking way bro. Please explain what being poor and trapped feels like to me.
Vote better.
Doesn’t the Democratic party have complete majority control of most cities and the state legislature?
That’s a party which usually claims to be about taking care of poor people or ‘housing is a human right’, but I keep seeing evidence that part of California’s issue is residents eliminating any/all zoning that isn’t classic single family homes in places where there’s tons of good jobs, but super expensive housing.
It’s hard to wade through political party propaganda, but I thought this was well documented.
I don’t live in CA, so I don’t really know more than articles publish, but it just seems like they voted for the more American liberal/progressive party and still aren’t getting those values?
Yeah, it turns out that politicians in both parties are garbage people pandering to the masses.
Instead of voting along party lines people need to vote for real people that can act like adults and actually govern. Most of our government officials are now too busy passing meaningless resolutions, performing the same study that’s popular in all the other cities, or busy on social media pandering to vocal minorities.
So instead of spending X dollars to ensure people have homes, we spend X++ dollars to evict them from their spaces?
It’s literally cheaper to provide the unhoused with healthcare. Not just for them, but for housed people and all taxpayers. But we (as a society) don’t. At this point I feel it’s literally about cruelty, and punishing them for their “life choices”. And you think we’ll just give them homes!?
But Sosh uh izm!
Next time you ask yourself that question, remember that these cunts are spending your tax dollars to hurt those who have nothing left to lose. Vote them out
And considering that veterans are over represented in the homeless population, they actively hurt those who have served the country instead of helping them. Shameful!
How else would the mega rich be able to buy up the property and rent out the spaces for normal people to finance?
Sure, it’s like how NYC spent $150 million to bust people evading $105,000 in subway fees. Absolutely anything to avoid legitimately helping people.
That is a stupid issue with Mayor Adams, but NYC legitimately spends millions on housing the homeless. The city has to get you shelter. It’s the law.
NYC has less than 5% unsheltered in contrast to San Francisco which has 30% unsheltered homeless per night. the driving force of this is the freezing winter in New York, which presents a hazard habitating outside. New York has to choose between making sure everyone gets a warm place, or they get to pick up the dead bodies.
California has a particularly high per-capita homeless population despite efforts toward housing. A large factor is NIMBY homeownership in which HOAs are determined to preserve property values and are a strong lobbying force.
None of that makes any sense. California and NYC have similar property values. If anything, NYC price per square footage is higher on average. There are basically no houses on Manhattan, so almost all places to live have a condo board or co-op board. It’s similar to an HOA.
California always had nice weather. Homeless people only existed in large numbers after Governor Reagan emptied the mental institutions and provided few resources for the residents. They literally took away their homes. Before that, NYC had more homeless people.
https://calmatters.org/commentary/2019/03/hard-truths-about-deinstitutionalization-then-and-now/
California could house almost all of its homeless people if they spent the money. It’s not even that expensive compared to the alternative.
Just to clarify, when comparing New York City to San Francisco, I’m talking about the percentage of the city’s homeless that aren’t covered by available shelters, whether state-sponsored, churches or non-profit. I wasn’t talking about whether New York City has more homeless than San Francisco (which I do not know) but that the shelters in New York cover most of the homeless, while that is not true in San Francisco.
The second paragraph is about California as a whole state. And yes, we could solve our homeless problem, but landowners actively lobby against it, and our state government is about as corrupt as any of the others.
Other states are sending their homeless to California.
How long has this been a law? The last time I went to NY I saw plenty of people sleeping in Penn Station.
Since 1981:
https://www.cityandstateny.com/policy/2021/10/how-nycs-right-shelter-mandate-works/185933/
And why would you think people wouldn’t be able to sleep in a train station? It’s just like an airport.
At least one person I saw was in the stairwells on the way from a waiting area down to a train platform. I don’t think passengers would want to sleep in the corridor between the gate and the plane at an airport, but you’re right, perhaps it is only the locked door that is holding them back.
Now I am kinda curious why they were staying there if they were supposed to be guaranteed shelter. I wouldn’t be surprised if the state failed to house them despite the law and that was the warmest place they could find or if the offered accommodations were unfit or dangerous.
I wouldn’t be surprised
You are just guessing. Look into it more. They are put up in places that are pretty decent for homeless shelters. They’re usually cheap hotels, so you get your own room but no kitchen. It’s not somewhere you want to live, but it’s 100x better than a train station.
Most homeless people are fine in them, but they have security watching the door so you can’t have a party, you can’t have pets, and you can’t have drugs. Maybe you can’t smoke. Some people don’t want to live under those conditions. Other people have mental illness and don’t want to be in any shelter.
Downvoted for stating an easily verifiable fact lol
Yes, facts are one thing. But what about what I believe is true? Isn’t that more important?
What I believe is important but what I feel is really what matters.
It will pay for itself in 1,500 years!
The suffering is the point. They want the threat of homelessness to keep the masses in line.
this brave new future which we live in fucking sucks
This is the best summary I could come up with:
For the last several months, a city at the heart of Silicon Valley has been training artificial intelligence to recognize tents and cars with people living inside in what experts believe is the first experiment of its kind in the United States.
Last July, San Jose issued an open invitation to technology companies to mount cameras on a municipal vehicle that began periodically driving through the city’s district 10 in December, collecting footage of the streets and public spaces.
There’s no set end date for the pilot phase of the project, Tawfik said in an interview, and as the models improve he believes the target objects could expand to include lost cats and dogs, parking violations and overgrown trees.
City documents state that, in addition to accuracy, one of the main metrics the AI systems will be assessed on is their ability to preserve the privacy of people captured on camera – for example, by blurring faces and license plates.
The group, made up of dozens of current and formerly unhoused people, has recently been fighting a policy proposed last August by the San Jose mayor, Matt Mahan, that would allow police to tow and impound lived-in vehicles near schools.
In addition to providing a training ground for new algorithms, San Jose’s position as a national leader on government procurement of technology means that its experiment with surveilling encampments could influence whether and how other cities adopt similar detection systems.
The original article contains 1,487 words, the summary contains 240 words. Saved 84%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
good bot
Maybe it’s to help them.
Don’t tell me, I like the illusion.
quite ironically in this context, san jose is named after st. joseph – he of the legal dad of jesus fame – who was once famously told there was no room at the inn and had to make do in a stable.
Sounds about right for American-christianity.
Only if you’re charging a luxury room price for the stable.
the accuracy for lived-in cars is still far lower: between 10 and 15%
Sounds like the tech isn’t terribly useful
I wonder if it could spot Steve
I’m so grateful he’s Canadian
It doesn’t have to be accurate to be useful
Case in point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADE_651
Basically a dowsing rod, totally incapable of detecting bombs, drugs, etc. But possibly still useful as a probable cause generator.
That was probably one of the more depressing Wiki articles I’ve read in a minute.
That surely won’t stop governments from throwing millions at it or private companies from taking the money.
Maybe you cope with the noxium of urine created amonia, the feces, the needles, the petty crime, and getting hassled and called a “fa**ot” for not having a $1 bill in San Jose, Oakland, SF, or LA but I cannot. All the well wishes are nice, and I would love love if the homeless could be put into unused office space or whatever pipedream is trendy at the time (and there have been a lot of pipedreams in my shortish life). But I want them gone, I want the worse-than-a-favela shantytowns, and I want the smell gone. I don’t really give a shit how it’s done so long as it isn’t cruel or illegal.
So sick to death of all the magical thinking from other liberals in this state. We have the run the of the place and homeless is worse by 5 fold. And the Republicans are just practically begging for mass execution and deportation, as is their way.
I don’t care anymore. Just go away.
You just want them gone, how uhh, how are you going to do that?
Duh, by gassing them or by firing squad!
How the fuck should I know? I just said idgaf how it’s done, I just do.
Why can’t I want homeless shit and piss and devastation out of my city while also have compassion for them as humans and help them? You people are so binary! You can do both.
Because the “fuck it I just want them gone” attitude is what’s led to every high level human rights crime and mass murder we learn about in school.
If your problem is the smell, then let’s put in latrines. Or, and I know this is a truly radical thought to American Capitalism, we can give them a place to live properly. Instead of forcing them to live like animals because the system refused to pay them enough to exist inside it properly.
These ‘homeless’ are no better than Gypsies. They reject society and take advantage of the good nature in people. They are scumbags and do not deserve sympathy.
If they can stand on the same corner every day at the same time they are more than capable of getting a job.
that is a disgusting take
Reality isn’t here to amuse you. People with nice shoes and cell phones aren’t ‘homeless’. They prey on the naive.
You are completely divorced from the reality on the ground.
A good chunk of the unhoused (at least where I live, US CA) have jobs, it’s just not enough for rent or they can’t find a place because of poor credit, which means the places available are even more expensive. Rent has increased faster than median income, and way faster than low income.
Most unhoused are there temporarily. Anything nice they have may be from before they got into their present situation. And what are they supposed to do? Pawn off their cell phone for pennies on the dollar?
The explosion in number of unhoused people is not just a bunch of people happening to have some sort of moral failure all at once. The simpler explanation is that our economy and society is failing. And what do we expect to see as resources are hoarded by the powerful at exponentially increasing rates? Where do those resources come from?
Also self report on your attitude toward Roma people.
Gaslight all you want. Homeless people are not ‘down-and-out’. There’s plenty of help for those people who want it. The rest are scammer scumbags.
your attitude toward Roma people.
Again you reject reality - https://www.policemag.com/special-units/article/15349960/gypsies-kings-of-con
Do you know how much work it is to live unhoused? How uncomfortable and dehumanizing? If you are completely without shelter, how it is after it rains, or the air is choked with smoke during fire season?
It seems like you have just one explanation for everything here. When there’s a problem, it’s because of some moral failing that has to be punished. The publication you reference is telling.
Your attitude toward both Roma and unhoused is an outside look in, entirely through the lens of criminality. There is no understanding there. You are missing the big picture, the why behind all of the things people do.
If you really want to scam people, you start an LLC and live comfortably off of other people’s work, like, you know, rich people do.
Are you talking about billionaires?
This comment is so ridiculous it has to be some sort of bait.
Not my fault you have your head up your ass. Open your eyes. Think for yourself.
Too scary huh? Never mind just go back to sleep, be a good little NPC.
Yeah it’s a bit racist about the Gypsies on top of the rest of the shit-take
Hey look its the bay area. Can it burn down again please. Sincerely some redneck from the IE
Right, why can’t it be a wonderful place to live like Riverside or San Bernardino?
Yeah we’re shitholes but we are damned well aware of it. Only the rich fuckers think otherwise.
Every year California is becoming more like Night City. Cyperpunk is supposed to be a dystopia, not an aspiration.
From the screen grabs, Since when is a legally street parked RV a homeless encampment? Looks like picking low hanging fruit for campaign talking points.
AI policing has begun.
They’ve already been using it to give probably cause and as evidence that all black people are the same and therefore guilty. I’m referring to facial recognition
In terms of legal precedent this may be a good thing in the long run.
The software billed as “AI” these days is half baked. If one or more law enforcement agencies point to the new piece of software the city deployed as their probable cause to make an arrest it won’t take long for that to get challenged in court.
This sets the stage for the legality of the software to be challenged now (in half baked form) and to set a legal standard demanding high accuracy and/or human assessment when making an arrest.
I think you’re more optimistic than I am about a conservative appeals court judge being able to first understand that the technology works very well, then actually give a shit if they do.
I’m arguing against the technology. I believe that the decision to make an arrest should fall to a human being and that individual should be allowed to override a bad call by the shit being billed as AI.
There’s a real possibility that law enforcement agencies may try to foist responsibility for decisions onto software and require officers to abide by the recommendations of said software. That would be a huge mistake.
This kind of software is already illegal in the EU. AI cannot be used for surveillance or to make decisions about people or arrest them.
Good for the EU I guess?
I was talking about it in the US, where the article is focused.
Yes, but the EU is setting legal precident here that American legislation should follow.
Oh boy, I have some news for you …
Defeatism only helps the thugs who benefit from chaos.
it’d be a shame if a .22 round found it’s way through the casing of that camera. A real damn shame for sure.
More like the camera will be triggering a mini gun to clear out the area with great precision.
This might actually get struck down on constitutionality. How does one confront their accuser in court if the accuser is a trained neural net?
And that’s without even touching on the fact that ML is stochastic in nature, and should absolutely not be considered accurate enough to be an unsupervised and unmoderated single-point-of-failure decision engine in contexts like legal, medical, or other critical decision-making process. The fact that ML regularly and demonstrably hallucinates (or otherwise yields garbage output) is just not acceptable in a regulatory sense.
Source: software engineer in biotech; we are specifically disallowed from using ML at any level in our work for the above reasons, as well as potential HIPAA-related data mining issues.
I don’t know much about jurisprudence, but wouldn’t the neural net be a tool of the person that brought the lawsuit.
Like if you get brought in due to DNA, you don’t have to face the centrifuge that helped extract your DNA from the sample?
You’re ignoring the fact that using such a failure-prone system to initiate legal proceedings against a citizen is ABSOLUTELY going to overload an already overloaded system. And that’s not even going into the fact that it puts an unjust burden on those falsely accused, or the fact that it’s targeting a segment of the population that’s a lot more likely to go “fuck it, I don’t care, how could things possibly get worse” (read: serious depression, PTSD, other neurodivergences that often correlate with being unhoused). This is by-design.
This is an all-around grade-A shit policy. It’s also a policy designed to treat the symptom instead of the cause. It will make the streets around San Jose look a bit nicer, and in doing so it will harm a lot of people.
I mean I’m not ignoring those facts. I prefaced by saying I don’t know much about jurisprudence.
Thanks for providing some insight though.
For what it’s worth, I didn’t intend to come off stabby or dismissive
No problem.
Appreciate you clarifying. Have a nice day random person.
I don’t think the idea is to bring criminal proceedings against people. Not sure what they do in San Jose but in cities I’ve lived, homeless people are essentially immune to fines or criminal charges because police know they can’t/wont pay anything. So they go force them to move and throw away their belongings if they can’t or don’t take them in time, but do not arrest or ticket these people.
I think it’s a stupid policy but I don’t see how any of this is applicable. If the AI identifies an encampment, it’s going to be police that come and scare them off. This isn’t like a red light camera where you get mailed a ticket because there’s no address to send a ticket to and the AI isn’t going to be able to identify individuals occupying a tent.
