Police departments are often among the tech industry’s earliest adopters of new products like drones, facial recognition, predictive software, and now artificial intelligence. Some police departments that have deployed AI speech-to-text programs are also testing a new, more comprehensive tool: software that uses technology similar to ChatGPT to automatically generate police reports. According to an Aug. 26 report, Associated PressAlready, many police officers are “enthusiastic” about generative AI tools that claim they can shave 30 to 45 minutes off routine administrative tasks.
First announced by Axon in April, DraftOne is [the] It has the ambitious goal of reducing gun deaths among police and civilians. The company, known for its Tasers and body cameras, the most popular among police departments, claims that its initial trials have saved users an hour a day in paperwork time.
“When officers can spend more time connecting with their communities and taking care of themselves, both physically and mentally, they are able to make better decisions which leads to more effective de-escalation efforts,” Axon said in the release.
The company said at the time that Draft One is built on Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI platform and automatically transcribes police body camera audio and “leverages AI to rapidly draft reports.” Reports are “rigorously developed from audio transcripts” following Draft One’s “baseline model” to prevent speculation or embellishment. After any significant additional information is added, officers must sign off on the report for accuracy before it is sent for another round of human review. Each report is also flagged if AI was involved in its writing.
[Related: ChatGPT has been generating bizarre nonsense (more than usual).]
talk AP On Monday, Axon AI product manager Noah Spitzer-Williams claimed Draft One uses “the same underlying technology as ChatGPT.” ChatGPT’s baseline generative large-scale language model, designed by OpenAI, has frequently been criticized for its tendency to mislead or provide false information in responses. But Spitzer-Williams likened Axon’s capabilities to having “access to more knobs and dials” than those available to average ChatGPT users. By adjusting its “creativity dial,” Draft One is said to help make police reports more fact-based and avoid generative AI’s ongoing hallucination problems.
The scope of Draft One’s use currently appears to vary by department. Captain Jason Bussert of the Oklahoma City Police Department claimed his 1,170-officer department currently only uses Draft One for “minor incident reports” that don’t result in arrests. But in Lafayette, Indiana, AP Police in the town of about 71,000 residents are reportedly free to use DraftOne “for any incident,” but professors at Lafayette’s neighboring Purdue University argue that generative AI isn’t reliable enough to handle potentially life-altering situations, like confrontations with police.
“The large-scale language models that underpin tools like ChatGPT are not designed to generate truth; rather, they string together plausible sentences based on predictive algorithms,” Lindsay Weinberg, a clinical associate professor at Purdue University who specializes in digital and technology ethics, said in a statement. Popular Science.
[Related: ChatGPT’s accuracy has gotten worse, study shows.]
Weinberg, the director of the Tech Justice Lab, also argues that “almost every algorithmic tool you can think of has been repeatedly demonstrated to reproduce and amplify existing racial injustices.”Experts have documented many instances of racial and gender bias in large-scale language models over the years.
“In the context of a legal system that currently supports the mass incarceration of criminals and condones suspects, the use of tools that “facilitate” the writing of police reports is [marginalized populations] This should be a real concern for people who care about privacy, civil rights and justice,” Weinberg said.
By email Popular ScienceA representative from OpenAI referred inquiries to Microsoft. At the time of writing, Axon, Microsoft, and the Lafayette Police Department had not responded to requests for comment.
