The AIs Have It
The Sunday Night Reader for 9/25/22
Clearview AI
I’m against AIs built to dragnet every photo on the internet, catalog every person’s behaviors, and sell the results to law enforcement. But I’m all for fascinating, well-told stories of those AIs, false charges, good Samaritans, and indigent defendants winning the day. From the story by Kashmir Hill:
“It was the scariest night of Andrew Grantt Conlyn’s life. He sat in the passenger seat of a two-door 1997 Ford Mustang, clutching his seatbelt, as his friend drove approximately 100 miles per hour down a palm-tree-lined avenue in Fort Myers, Fla. His friend, inebriated and distraught, occasionally swerved onto the wrong side of the road to pass cars that were complying with the 35-m.p.h. speed limit.
‘Someone is going to die tonight,’ Mr. Conlyn thought.
And then his friend hit a curb and lost control of the car. The Mustang began spinning wildly, hitting a light pole and three palm trees before coming to a stop, the passenger’s side against a tree.
At some point, Mr. Conlyn blacked out. When he came to, his friend was gone, the car was on fire and his seatbelt buckle was jammed. Luckily, a good Samaritan intervened, prying open the driver’s door and pulling Mr. Conlyn out of the burning vehicle.
Mr. Conlyn didn’t learn his savior’s name that Wednesday night in March 2017, nor did the police, who came to the scene and found the body of his friend, Colton Hassut, in the bushes near the crash; he had been ejected from the car and had died. In the years that followed, the inability to track down that good Samaritan derailed Mr. Conlyn’s life. If Clearview AI, which is based in New York, hadn’t granted his lawyer special access to a facial recognition database of 20 billion faces, Mr. Conlyn might have spent up to 15 years in prison because the police believed he had been the one driving the car.” Read more.
Oath Keepers in Law Enforcement
Hackers unearthed the fascist Oath Keepers’ mailing list. The Anti-Defamation League culled the list and found about 80 people who hold or are running for public office, as well as nearly 400 law enforcement officers or members of the military. My favorite, such as it is? The cop who tried to recruit dozens of other LEOs to the Oath Keepers but who explained to the Anti-Defamation League that he left the organization because — I kid you not — they sent too many emails.
So, word to the wise: There's a market for authoritarian insurrection among those who promise to serve and protect, but not if you're spammy about it. Read more.
Yo Soy Dracula
Mandalit Del Barco had a great story this week on the second-shift cast of 1931’s “Dracula,” who shot a Spanish-language version of the movie after hours on the same sets. Check it out.
Here’s a quick interview with the woman who played Mina Harker in the Spanish-language version…
