Pre-crime AI seems to be all the rage lately, as another attempt to criminalize innocent people has been developed. This time by a team at Harrisburg University.

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Professors have developed AI "automated computer facial recognition software capable of predicting whether someone is likely going to be a criminal". Yes, they said that in their own words in the official press release. Amazing how they didn't see any issue with this.

Identifying criminality from facial images

"We already know machine learning techniques can outperform humans on a variety of tasks related to facial recognition and emotion detection. This research indicates just how powerful these tools are by showing they can extract minute features in an image that are highly predictive of criminality."

"By automating the identification of potential threats without bias, our aim is to produce tools for crime prevention, law enforcement, and military applications that are less impacted by implicit biases and emotional responses."

"Crime is one of the most prominent issues in modern society. Even with the current advancements in policing, criminal activities continue to plague communities. The development of machines that are capable of performing cognitive tasks, such as identifying the criminality of person from their facial image, will enable a significant advantage for law enforcement agencies and other intelligence agencies to prevent crime from occurring in their designated areas."

The group goes on to say the technology has "80% accuracy and no racial bias". Just by looking at your face it will "predict if someone is a criminal". No racial bias? Really?

Much of a humans facial features are racially determined. You can look around at various races and see differences that carry across that group with changes as ethnic boundaries change. They put an emphasis on "emotion detection". Maybe it will be race-agnostic. OK.

But do you want to trust a machine (or an authoritarian statist reviewer) to single you out in society, and report you to law enforcement as a potential criminal based on your facial expressions?

Had a bad day? Well, expect a friendly knock on your door from the police. Who knows, you might even get a nice visit from the SWAT team with guns-a-blazing! How exciting!

Facebook backlash

The Facebook post from ABC27 has only 37 "likes", some of which are laughter and angry faces, but has 50 comments to reflect the negative appeal of this technological tyranny. Here is what some people had to say.

Good to see they’re bringing 1800’s ideas and practices into the 21st century. I’m a little confused on how there’s no bias when the person hasn’t committed a crime yet and it’s based on appearance. That would seem to be the the very definition of biased. Good job, Academia!

Nothing new. This is just the 21st century version of a very old theory.
Societies have been trying to push the idea of "born criminals" for centuries. They measured eye-distance, torso ratios, and jaw/mouth configurations to attempt to identify criminals before they became dangerous.
https://www.history.com/news/born-criminal-theory-criminology

Sounds like the Thought Police have stepped up their game!

And this isn’t profiling because......?

Sounds like Minority Report.

This is an Onion article, right?

Really? How is this not discrimination?

As in Phrenology- a discredited theory ,nay crackpot, theory discarded in the last century. Also , maybe a violation of the 4th amendment . Lastly - a pretty stupid waste of academia.

Pulling the press release

The negative feedback received online was so strong that the original press release published on the Harrisburg University site has been pulled. Archive.is has a wayback capture of the publication, which is the same as the ABC27 copy still available online.

The news release outlining research titled “A Deep Neural Network Model to Predict Criminality Using Image Processing” was removed from the website at the request of the faculty involved in the research. The faculty are updating the paper to address concerns raised.

It's astounding how some people (academics) who think their smart are very stupid when it comes to morality.

Therapy and re-education in the growing scientific dictatorship

The way I see it eventually playing out if (when) this tech gets adopted, is that this will be an early detection system to weed out the outliers and get the rest to love their slavery.

First, they pre-crime scan the population for those who don't look happy enough, or have some cynical look of discontent with their life, society, the government, etc. Then have them declared a potential "criminal". They get reported as potential dissenters, criminals, or worse, potential domestic "terrorists". Then, the big data web that ensnares us can be scanned to see what our online activity is.

If we are just a regular Joe Schmoe who buys into and accepts the state-programming, then we're cleared. Maybe they just have us undergo some "therapy" with some drugs to make us a "happier" member of the cult of conditioned society.

If we have "suspicious" activity, like say we think for ourselves and look into how the government is controlling us, then we are flagged as a potential anti-government "terrorist" to be arrested. We get sent to "re-education camps" to make us fall back in line with the utopian technocratic-scientific dictatorship of society.

You would expect it to be in the Onion, as a FB commenter said. But this madness is being pursued and pushed for integration into society. It's no joke. Yet, it's a joke in terms of everything being a "big fucking joke" of ridiculous deception that people buy into. Move over 1984, 2020 and beyond has you beat!