California Lawmakers: Support S.B. 524 to Rein in AI Written Police Reports

3 months ago

EFF urges California state lawmakers to pass S.B. 524, authored by Sen. Jesse Arreguín. This bill is an important first step in regaining control over police using generative AI to write their narrative police reports. 

This bill does several important things: It mandates that police reports written by AI include disclaimers on every page or within the body of the text that make it clear that this report was written in part or in total by a computer. It also says that any reports written by AI must retain their first draft. That way, it should be easier for defense attorneys, judges, police supervisors, or any other auditing entity to see which portions of the final report were written by AI and which parts were written by the officer. Further, the bill requires officers to sign and verify that they read the report and its facts are correct. And it bans AI vendors from selling or sharing the information a police agency provided to the AI.

These common-sense, first-step reforms are important: watchdogs are struggling to figure out where and how AI is being used in a police context. In fact, a popular AI police report writing tool, Axon’s Draft One, would be out of compliance with this bill, which would require them to redesign their tool to make it more transparent. 

This bill is an important first step in regaining control over police using generative AI to write their narrative police reports. 

Draft One takes audio from an officer’s body-worn camera, and uses AI  to turn that dialogue into a narrative police report. Because independent researchers have been unable to test it, there are important questions about how the system handles things like sarcasm, out of context comments, or interactions with members of the public that speak languages other than English. Another major concern is Draft One’s inability to keep track of which parts of a report were written by people and which parts were written by AI. By design, their product does not retain different iterations of the draft—making it easy for an officer to say, “I didn’t lie in my police report, the AI wrote that part.” 

All lawmakers should pass regulations of AI written police reports. This technology could be nearly everywhere, and soon. Axon is a top supplier of body-worn cameras in the United States, which means they have a massive ready-made customer base. Through the bundling of products, AI-written police reports could be at a vast percentage of police departments. 

AI-written police reports are unproven in terms of their accuracy, and their overall effects on the criminal justice system. Vendors still have a long way to go to prove this technology can be transparent and auditable. While it would not solve all of the many problems of AI encroaching on the criminal justice system, S.B. 524 is a good first step to rein in an unaccountable piece of technology. 

We urge California lawmakers to pass S.B. 524. 

Matthew Guariglia

【フォトアングル】日中戦争終結80周年記念イベントに370人参加=8月11日、東京・練馬区、伊東良平撮影

3 months ago
 8月11日に日本とアジアの平和をつなぐ「日中戦争終結から80周年・記念のつどい」が東京・練馬のココネリホールで開かれた。主催は日中友好協会が母体の実行委員会で、第1部は作家の島田雅彦さんが「米中露の狭間に生きるということ」と題し講演。「ナショナリズムに訴えるのはファシズムに繋がる」と話した。第2部は反戦平和の合唱組曲や沖縄三線、太極拳などが披露され、写真の東京朝鮮中高級学校生による舞踊には、参加者370人の大きな拍手が起きた。       JCJ月刊機関紙「ジャーナリスト」..
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