Full transcript
You know, a wise man or well fictional
character Ian Malcolm from the classic
Jurassic Park once said,
"Yeah, but your scientists were so
preoccupied with whether or not they
could, they didn't stop to think they
should." Side note, rest in peace, Sam
Neil. That was a bummer. But this line
from this movie 30 years ago can apply
to a lot of things today, but especially
with technology. things like AI, which I
have plenty of thoughts on, but the
slippery slope of having the power to
well have untapped power, something that
can be justified in the moment or
temporary
is never really temporary. This,
including the hot topic lately of flock
safety and their notorious cameras. Now,
I'm typically not a commentator on
things of this nature, but it actually
affects me in a very direct way. I just
got back from doing the Rubicon trail.
Thanks, Jeep. Appreciate that. Where I
had zero signal the entire time, which
was a blessing. But once I got signal, I
got sent this article again and again
and again. It's an article from the car
journalist website, The Drive,
previously known as
Drive. No disrespect, a synopsis of the
article is that the car reviewer Joel
was reviewing a very expensive Range
Rover. He got tracked by the police
using the Flock cameras and then was
wrongly accused of stealing the Range
Rover. What a day. And since I'm a car
reviewer myself, many people seem to
take interest of what my opinion on this
crazy situation was and how it might
affect what other car journalists do in
the future or even just the average car
guy. Now, with me being here in Georgia,
Atlanta has had a not so great spotlight
with this whole situation because we
have a ton of flaw cameras. And it's
been highlighted many, many times that
you can simply hack. I use that term
extraordinarily lightly because it's so
easy that it might as well not be called
hacking. You can access these cameras
extraordinarily easy. So, in today's
unorthodox video, I'm going to be
talking about a few things. what
happened with the drive and its
journalist flux safety and how it kind
of relates to the surveillance cameras
of the past versus now. Also, the whole
speed camera infrastructure and some
laughable interview clips from the
company that just blow my mind and if we
should actually all be worried about
this or is this just a big old outrage
machine online. So, let's get into it.
[music]
Anyways, if you don't know the details
of the story with the drive, Joel was
reviewing a very expensive Range Rover
up in Minnesota. It's a lovely state, by
the way, but man, they cannot catch a
break in the news this past year,
[laughter] dude. Joel drives into a
Kohl's parking lot and the Plymouth
Police Department box him in with four
cop cars. They start yelling at him,
tell him to get out of the car. And I
really can't blame Joel the journalist
for being so off-put by this because to
him, he's just doing his job. He's just
reviewing a car like every other day.
And a big part of reviewing a press car
is to kind of live normally with it,
right? He's just like running errands
and stuff of that nature. But he does
the right thing. He gets out of the car,
puts his hand up, follows the orders,
doesn't cause too much of a problem for
the cops, obviously, cuz he didn't do
anything. And when you see the body cam
footage, it's pretty crazy.
You and you and the wife.
Come on, please.
Both of us.
Both of them. Yep. Okay. Is this your
car?
Uh, it's complicated. Can I explain it?
You can explain it. Yes.
I'm an automotive journalist.
Okay. So I write I I'm the director of
content product for the drive.com. I'm
on a uh media website. That's that's me
right there.
The reason you have forced here is
because your license plate is registered
as stolen license [music] plates in our
system.
Are you serious? I review cars for a
living. I fly around the world, review
cars. Because, and I quote, "The reason
I was IDed as a dangerous car thief was
a simple data error made 2,000 m away in
California. Creating an edge case within
an edge case that Flock's AI camera
network was unable to handle. Freaking
clankers, dude. What the heck are we
going to [laughter] do about this?" The
cops then added that the plate was
reported stolen by a Jaguar Land Rover
dealership in Los Angeles. Car theft in
LA. No way, dude. And this is when it
gets blatantly obvious that it was an AI
error and not just a human error. I
quote, "The New Jersey plates that were
allegedly stolen from the LA dealer were
DTM, not 3410
DTM." But when the police report was
created and the plate was entered into
Flock, it was just recorded as 34 DTM.
just five large characters, no little
number in the middle. And Fox AI tech
wasn't registering that non-standard
little number when it began picking up
the Range Rover around town. Aka, it was
tracking him everywhere across town. So,
when it was going through an
intersection, it was getting hit by a
flot camera. And that's how the cops
were able to find him so fast. It as in
the AI just saw 34 DTM in large type and
started alerting the local police. Not
scary at all. What could possibly go
wrong? But of course, amazing
technology. So, recap here. Not only
could this get you falsely accused using
an AI model of stealing somebody's car,
the AI doesn't even do the one job it's
designed to do. Because we are rushing
way too quickly into this kind of
technology, like way too fast. I'm also
biased because stupid data centers are
taking racetracks away. So, there is a
little bit of that. Can we just have AI
like do the boring stuff like
spreadsheets?
Please, can we not do this? Just a
thought. And stop making AI art and AI
music. Please. Side note, I've been
teaching myself how to be a music
producer and it's made me hate AI even
more. But anyway, let's move on. Pseudo
producers, boo. Also, to make it even
more light-hearted, people take
advantage of these cameras and AI
algorithms for their own personal
reasons. What could possibly go wrong?
For example, 10 police officers just got
arrested in Atlanta for taking advantage
of the flock camera system for their own
personal reasons or personal gain.
Basically misusing the flaw camera
database. Probably looking at people
they shouldn't be looking at. This is
literally a doorway to crazy people's
wonderland. Dude, [laughter]
the LAPD, out of all people, abandoned
the flock contract. That is saying
something. The cameras are mostly
peaceful. I swear. While I was digging,
I also found this interview that just
made me go, "Are you kidding me?" It was
a journalist asking one of the tech guys
from Flock. I saw the camera literally
followed me around. So basically he
tested it by walking in front of it,
walking back, and it just kept tracking
him. Essentially, the guy responds with,
"Oh, it's not trained to track people.
It's trained to track moving objects."
There's an object detection feature that
you can set up. It's called guardian
mode that allows a camera to just know
if there's movement from a person
[music] in the screen. It is not
tracking where you're going to go, where
you're going to leave, or you're going
to start and stop.
Like, not a crazy take here, but you
know what a moving object is? a person
walking. Anyways, let's talk about how
this affects car people in general or
just normal people driving every day.
Other countries over the years I have
visited, you could argue were a
surveillance state. I mean like crazy
crazy levels of surveillance. For
example, I got a ticket in the mail from
a foreign country for 1 kilometer over 1
kilometer and they mailed it to my
house. It was more expensive to mail the
ticket to my house than give up on a 1
kilometer ticket from a speed camera. So
surveillance on cars is nothing new,
especially with the speed camera
infrastructure around the world. In
fact, in Europe, it's way less common to
see a cop like on the side of the road
getting you with laser or radar. It's
just cameras everywhere most of the
time. But speed cameras, which I do
despise, have a much more simple
function, right? Another example is
France. In 2018 and 2019, France
destroyed, [laughter]
by France, I mean citizens, not the
police or the military, whoever, just
normal average people destroyed 60 to
75% of the speed cameras around the
entire country. For context, that's
thousands of cameras. It's not like, oh,
little Timmy's going over there and
spray painting a camera. No, it's the
whole country. And I won't be surprised
if it starts to ramp up if the whole
flux safety thing becomes even more of a
hot topic. People are going to do some
pretty wild things. I'm not encouraging
this though. Like try your very best to
go to your city hall and cause a ruckus
and demand them to be removed. That is
overall on paper the right thing to do.
Now, if you're curious, what's my
personal take on all of this? This isn't
good. [laughter] Period. It's not good.
if you can't really see that already.
Sure, the cameras suck, but it's more so
the AI algorithms that track people and
the plates and stuff that seem to be the
real problem. That's what I'm not a fan
of personally. Cameras do solve crime,
but not a hot take here at all, but
there's a time and place and a way to
use it. A sad example would be what
happened at the Boston Marathon all
those years ago. Without all the cameras
on the street, those perpetrators
probably would have gotten away with it.
do remember having discussions with
people around that time where it opened
the door to people's minds saying, "Oh,
we just need more. We just need more
cameras. We need more surveillance cuz
then we just catch everybody, right?"
Without kind of talking about the
sacrifice that might give in the future
when technology gets better, aka AI
algorithms. A camera is one thing, a
vlog camera is another thing. So, for us
who love driving and maybe driving a
certain way up in the mountains or
something like that, it's going to be
even harder for us to well enjoy things.
It definitely makes me rethink reviewing
cars in certain ways. I definitely don't
like it for obvious reasons, but I also
made this video as a prompt for
discussion. This is not a political
video by any means. I don't think this
is a controversial take that we really
need to think about that we should all
collectively be on board with and be on
the same team about. I think it's
important to have a safe as a society as
you can, but there is a certain degree
of paranoia and taking advantage of the
systems around us that is very scary.
So, please down in the comments bevil,
like the video. It really helps me out.
Once again, thank you all for watching
and I'll see you guys next time. Take it
easy.
[music]