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This is a weak or misleading story about AI.

First, the detective used the FaceSketchID system, which has been around since around 2014. It is not new or uniquely tied to modern AI.

Second, the system only suggests possible matches. It is still up to the detective to investigate further and decide whether to pursue charges. And then it is up to court to issue the warrant.

The real question is why she was held in jail for four months. That is the part that I do not understand. My understanding is that there is 30-day limit (the requesting state must pick up the defendant within 30 day). Regarding the individual involved, Angela Lipps, she has reportedly been arrested before, so it is possible she was on parole. So maybe they were holding her because of that?

Can someone clarify how that process works?


In the US there are no consequences for people in power failing to follow procedures, laws or regulations - except for being told to stop doing whatever illegal thing they're doing, and possibly getting sued way down the line, which gets paid by taxpayers.

From reading more into the case, it seems the issue may be related to how her lawyer handled the case.

They probably did “identity challenge” arguing that she is not the right person. But from Tennessee’s perspective, she was considered the correct person to be arrested, so there was no “mistaken identity” in their system. In other words, North Dakota Wanted person x and here is person x.

Once a judge in North Dakota reviewed the full evidence (and found that person they issued warrant for arrest is not one they want), the case was dismissed.


Anyone involved in this who didn't immediately raise a giant stink to get this woman out of jail is partially at fault imo.

Yes but a judge issued the warrant in the first place.

Cops did not do a proper investigation and the judge green-lighted it.

It is all on the JUDGE or possibly a magistrate who approved a faulty warrant.

The judge failed the poor woman. FIRE him.

Then sue Clearview for big bucks.


The judge likely issued the warrant based on the detective’s sworn testimony. In most cases, a judge does not have the ability or detailed knowledge to independently verify whether the detective completed all necessary checks.

This situation likely resulted from either sloppy investigative work or an honest mistake: the detective believed her booking photo matched the individual captured on camera.

Her booking photo from a prior arrest can be found here: https://mugshots.com/US-States/Tennessee/Carter-County-TN/An...

Do we have recording of the suspect they used for the match?


There's a screenshot from a security camera with the _actual_ suspect in the article that was posted to HN last week.

https://www.grandforksherald.com/news/north-dakota/ai-error-...


what's with the weird obsession all over the thread that it is the JUDGE who is the only person at fault here?

The police was wrong, but the judge is the check that is supposed to prevent the police errors from being actually committed.

Sure, when the junior deletes the production database you are also angry at the junior, but you also ask why the junior got permission to do that.


Because the police or the prosecutor or whatever can ask for whatever they want, but it's up to the judge to refuse their stupid claims. Though the others should get some blame too.

Especially considering the judge is the only person involved in this who is completely immune from being sued.

Under qualified immunity cops are all but completely immune to being sued.

They really aren’t. Qualified immunity is probably too strong, but litigants get past it all the time.

On the other hand, judges have absolute immunity for actions taken in the course of their judicial duties.


It’s the same poster, I assumed they were ai at first but the account is from 2017.

Some people are just weird


[deleted]

This isn’t how it works, you can invoke your right to a speedy trial at any point you want. You can spend 2 months waiting and then invoke it if you want.

The timer starts from when you invoke it, though.

The 2 issues, which she may be caught in, are that it’s “speedy” from the perspective of a court, and that it really means “free from undue delays”.

There is no general definition of a speedy trial, but I think the shortest period any state defines is a month (with some states considering several months to still be “speedy”).

A trial can still be speedy even past that window if the prosecution can make a case that they genuinely need more time (like waiting for lab tests to come back).

It’s basically only ever not speedy if the prosecution is just not doing anything.


You get charged with something and if you want to have the trial right now, before you have any idea what's going on, then you can insist, which basically nobody does because it's pretty crazy to go in blind

Actually most criminal defense attorneys recommend not waiving your speedy trial rights. Yes, the defense goes in blind. But so does the prosecution, and they're the ones that have to make a case.

The usual result for defendants that don't waive their speedy trial rights is an acquittal if the case goes to trial (between 50-60%), which doesn't sound like a lot but prosecutors are expected to win >90% of their trials. Additionally, in many counties they don't have sufficient courtrooms to handle all the criminal trials within the speedy trial timeframe, so if the trial date comes and a courtroom is not available the case is dismissed with prejudice. Nonviolent misdeameanors are the lowest priority for a courtroom (and by that I mean even family law cases have priority over nonviolent misdos in most counties), so those cases are frequently dismissed a day or two before the trial date. Consequently, most prosecutors will offer better and better plea bargains as the trial date approaches.

This is even more true for murders, which is why murder suspects don't usually get charged for a year or two after the crime.


Apparently I set up a unit test for Cunningham's Law today.

> The real question is why she was held in jail for four months. That is the part that I do not understand. My understanding is that there is 30-day limit (the requesting state must pick up the defendant within 30 day). Regarding the individual involved, Angela Lipps, she has reportedly been arrested before, so it is possible she was on parole. So maybe they were holding her because of that?

As the article gestures towards, challenging the extradition can greatly extend the timeline, from 30 days after the arrest to 90 days after a formal identity hearing. Which isn't fair and isn't intuitive, but is unfortunately a long-standing part of the system. (Even worse, this kind of mistaken identity can't be challenged in an extradition hearing; the question isn't whether she's the person who committed the crime but whether she's the person identified in the warrant.)


That is my assumption. I assume who ever was representing her made a mistake and challenged the warrant and that caused delay in the extradition.

I wish I could find the link, but I believe she was in jail on parole violation, unrelated to anything that the "AI" flagged her on.

Her picture was used as part of a fake id card, in the commission of a crime. The fuzzy camera footage looked like her (from stills I've seen) and her picture was on the fake ID. Those 2 circumstantial items were, apparently, enough to have a warrant issued.

They picked her up in TN and held her for 4 months, even after:

The ND police knew the ID was fake and the person using it was not her. The ND police knew she had been in TN before, during, and after the crime.

She is still technically a suspect, even after all of this has come out.


Ok. The mistake was made by North Dakota police (and they blame AI - the AI just gave them a possible match. Whatever.).

What I still do not understand is why she spent nearly six months in a Tennessee jail. That part remains unclear and needs further explanation.


From the first time the story surfaced, for spurious reasons[1] she was booked as fugitive, and that made it so that there was "no need" for normal timeframe of hearing.

[1] The reason being that she was found in Tennessee while being searched for a crime in another state, thus allowing them to treat it as interstate fugitive from a crime scene


She was not

Source: I live in Fargo and have been following this story closely. Everyone here is pissed


Thanks for clarifying.

I wonder who is slandering her more... WOW

Maybe the citys insurance carrier hired a FIRM...

They will be taking a hit.


That is the first I have heard of that. A small unexplained blurb in this article. Already in jail on parole violation..

Maybe she objected to the extradition order without good counsel.

"I aint never been to N.Dakota". She found out the hard way how the law works..

What about the banks being hit. Surely they have good cameras. This was bad mojo. I would think a Wells Fargo/BoA has a unit for this stuff.

Finincial crimes handled like this. The banks will be sued too I suspect.. Deep pockets settle out.


> It is still up to the detective to investigate further and decide whether to pursue charges. And then it is up to court to issue the warrant.

This is how it should work, but I still think it is important to discuss these failures in the context of AI risks.

One of the largest real-world dangers of AI (as we define that now) is that it is often confidently wrong and this is a terrible situation when it comes to human factors.

A lot of people are wired in such a way that perceived confidence hacks right through their amygdala and they immediately default to trust, no matter how unwarranted.


This needs to be taken in context. In my view, AI definitely gives better advice than friends, acquaintances, or colleagues (at least in the US culture). But the advice from parents is still the most valuable.

Here is how I would rank it:

1. Parents

2. AI

3. Friends and family

4. Internet search

5. Reddit


Why do you trust ai so much? I don’t trust it to tell me the sky is blue.

ime, my parents gave some of the worst advice in addition to being bigots

My closest friends are #1 because they know me, my history, and my vices


The actual number is that 98% have less than 2 stars (0 or 1). About 90.25% has zero stars.

So Claude repos are statistically more likely to have stars than the average GitHub repo. Not the conclusion the headline was going for.

But the header is just "90% of Claude-linked output going to GitHub repos w <2 stars". No conclusion, just some random fact.

The problem is that this title is editorialized, and the fact is cherry-picked. Why not =0? Why not >1000? This is just a dashboard, it highlights "Interesting Observations", but stars statistics is not there.


Sounds like Claude commits are, on average, going into higher visibility repositories than humans… maybe the author would like to reconsider their approach?

Well, you can't reconsider your approach when you don't like the results.

If anything, the fact that this is what he arrived at, even when starting with the opposite position, is proof of the validity of this result.


Yes, stars can mean a lot of things.

- visibility

- popularity (technical, domain, persona)

- genuine utility

- novelty

...

There are also plenty of super high utility repos that are widely used (often indirectly), but don't have a lot of stars, or even a meagre amount.

Also there is the issue of star != star, because it's not granular.

It's similar to upvotes on general social media platforms. Everyone likes cute cats doing funny things somewhat, but only few people appreciate something that's more niche but way more impactful, useful or entertaining (or requires some effort to consume), but those who do, value it very highly. But the same person might use the same score (single upvote) for a cat video and a video that they value much higher.


You should check recent commits, because obviously there are a lot of forked 0 star repos.

I think this is useful in answering the grandparent comment's question:

stars : uniq(k)

1 : 14946505

10 : 1196622

100 : 213026

1000 : 28944

10000 : 1847

100000 : 20


each line (mostly) being equal length provides me an odd comfort

power law distribution ~1/x I think

Zipf's law?

only 80 more repos need 100000 stars and all lines would be equal! e.g.

1 : 14946505

10 : 1196622

100 : 213026

1000 : 28944

10000 : 1847

100000 : 100


you would lose 80 repos from "10000 : 1847" also in that case.

interesting that you only need ~150 stars on a project for it to be in the top 1%

Let's establish a roving band of ~150 GitHub users that go around 1% things.

Funny how everyone gravitated towards analysis of the star distribution of REPOS when the headline claim is on ADDITIONS. If you look at my comment below (invite you to verify the stats), the distribution of additions by star count is far more weighted to 2+ star repos in GitHub overall. The observation is meaningful, up to the observer to draw a conclusion. Is Claude just speeding up output or is it generating piles of spaghetti code with no use? Considering the get rich quick economy that has sprung up around app development, I'm inclined to at least consider the latter.

How do you know that?


[flagged]


It is relevant because if the vast, vast majority of repos have 2 or less stars then it's not that weird that a great deal of repos linked are, too, 2 or less stars.

Interesting. I have vey limited knowledge of Slovenian politics, but it often seems that whoever gets elected ends up facing corruption charges and ends up in prison after the next election cycle.

Since Janez Jansa will be prime minister he will be charged for corruption by end of his term and this could be the third time for him to go to prison (the first instance happened under the socialist regime, so maybe that does not count).

Anyway, I do not think Israelis needed to work hard here to find some dirt.


We should do something here.

Nothing will be done at Federal level.

But california is big enough to make things moving without any federal level law.

For example, what about this:

- no sales taxes on new EV sales

- free registration for 5 years

- free bridge tolls for 5 years

This will be paid by increasing gas taxes, sales taxes on ICE, and registration fees for ICE.

That might convince some of companies to start making EVs again.


The problem with many of these EVs is that they were way too expensive. The main reason companies were producing them is due to regulatory requirements and how emissions standards are calculated, not necessarily because wanted to sell these EVs.

What we really need are incentives for companies to build more affordable EVs. California could play a role here, but given the strong opinions we have about Elon Musk, nothing will be done.


China and increasingly India are building very affordable EVs. You can get this guy for $7700, or full-featured models from $10,000:

https://driveauthority.com/cheapest-ev-car-in-china/

All you really need is a political snap of the fingers to remove tariffs, so they can start selling them in the US.

Of course, there is absolutely no way this will happen with the current administration.


Yeah seeing more and more 2W, 3W and 4W in India along with rooftop solar which government subsidizes.

Mind you I am living in a Tier 4 “city”.


I 100% understand that nothing will be done on the federal level. But california is big enough to make things moving without any federal level law.

For example, what about:

- no sales taxes on new EV sales

- free registration for 5 years

- free bridge tolls for 5 years

That might convince some of these companies to start making EVs again.


They’ll make up the lost revenue by additional taxes on the common people?

I do not know. It is all about priorities.

Raise taxes on gas? Put extra taxes on sell ICE vehicles? Increase registration fees for ICE vehicles? (In short - ICE sales will paying for money lost via EV sales)

I’m not saying it will be easy. I’m saying that if we really want EVs to succeed we can do it.


All the EV tariffs are staying place past the end of the Trump administration because protectionism is now bipartisan.

That heavily depends on the Dem primaries. I think after the unpopularity of Biden and the 2024 loss by Harris there might be more appetite to rock the boat instead of getting another establishment caretaker.

However, the more radical wing of Democrats still have some anti-globalism in them (eg Bernie). But still, imho: Unusual outcomes are on the table for Democratic party leadership at this point.


> All the EV tariffs are staying place past the end of the Trump administration because protectionism is now bipartisan.

Anything Trump supported will continue to be seen as hot garbage after he is removed from office. There is no appetite for protectionism when it has hurt rather than benefitted the American economy.


Or just allow Chinese EVs without tariffs.

Would be incredible for US auto consumers.

But might put some of our automakers out of business.


What about no sales taxes on EV purchases (full sales tax exemption) in California?

There is no world in which this would happen, because the auto industry holds up so much secondary and tertiary domestic manufacturing (most of which use China at the bottom anyway).

I don’t care about US brands, let Xiaomi and BYD run those factories. Just let me have a YU-7 for the love of god!

Those factories won’t be run by Chinese automakers they’ll be shut down with the corresponding loss of jobs and secondary industries.

Gotta say I was annoyed at the time but deprecating the Australian car manufacturers last decade means we have no scruples about allowing cheap as chips Chinese EVs through the door and I’m loving it.


No the regulatory requirements and emission standards have nothing to do with affordability. The only reason is just economies of scale. In fact regulatory requirements help because companies like Tesla historically sold their emission credits to other carmakers to make money.

Confused about this comment. Are you talking about government subsidies and tax incentives? Haven't companies and consumers already been given these incentives? Now that they're drawing down, it's obvious there's a limited market. What needs to happen is real economic demands need to make the market not created ones. Then prices will come down and efficiencies will increase .

We must not be visiting the same city.

Excellent insight. Trust is key for capitalism. And for functioning democracy. When trust is lost, whether in the system or in your fellow citizens, everything begins to suffer.

I think of society as an extended family. If you do not trust your spouse, many things in your home simply will not work.


This has nothing to do with AI.

There are also a few questions that remain unanswered:

- Did she have previous arrests, and did they use booking photos to identify her? I found someone named Angela Lipps who was arrested in 2001, 2003, 2017, and 2019. The 2017 arrest was for a probation violation: https://archive.ph/CpmXu The 2019 arrest was for public intoxication: https://archive.ph/yjFL9

- Another confusing detail is that she was in jail for four months without being extradited. That is quite unusual, unless the local authorities were holding her on unrelated charges.

So this news story seems to have nothing to do with AI. It is also very light on details about the case and what actually happened. And actual criminal case here.


Appealing to authority ("The AI said it was her!") is absolutely a problem.


No. I think the core issue is that they used her 2019 booking photo (a mugshot) from a public intoxication arrest. I am not sure whether a photo like that is reliable :)

In the end, the detective compared the booking photo with the camera footage and concluded they were the same person, then presented that to the judge.

I also wonder what her “probation” was for. Maybe she once wrote a bad check and got into trouble, which might have made the detective more inclined to believe it was her.

Anyway, this does not appear to be an AI issue at all.

But it is nice scary story to remind us not to be lazy and trust it unconditionally.


Yes. Appealing to authority ("The AI said it was her!") is absolutely a problem.

I'm not dismissing the rest of what you are saying, but I don't think you should dismiss appeals to authority being a factor, either.


And? Do you agree with the point or the idea the poster said? Or not?

I remember that in the early days of HN there were people who would downvote comments just because they had grammar mistakes, without even trying to understand the idea or what the poster was trying to say.

I guess this thread looks like a bunch of grammar Nazis crying because they have lost their ammunition :)


You’re literally trying to justify using AI against the site creators wishes in a thread about not using AI.

AI will destroy HN and any hope of a similar site ever existing in the future. If you really want low quality slop posting, please go to Reddit and let the rest of us cling on for the little time HN has left.


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