The Number That Gets You Shot

Imagine a world in which everything about your life -- your friends, your family, which school you went to, your social media activity -- are reduced to a simple number used by police and the government to determine whether something bad will happen to you.

It sounds crazy, and almost paranoid, but algorithm-based initiatives have aided police from Chicago to London to help guide public safety interventions. In the case of Robert McDaniel, he was assigned a score that put him on Chicago’s “Heat List,” and he was told that he was likely to be involved in a shooting. But police didn’t know whether he’d be the shooter or the victim.

That resulted in the city offering him a range of services, but it also put him on the police’s radar -- and that began a chain of events that fulfilled a grim prophecy.

The promise of advanced math utilizing increasingly sophisticated data collection grows stronger by the year… but so do its potential perils. Can quantifying a person’s behavior actually tell us anything useful about them? And if it can, is it ethical?

The rise and fall of Chicago’s Heat List demonstrates not just how predictive policing works, but how it impacts individuals. And while the calculations themselves are a black box, there’s one thing we do know: once you’re on the list, you can’t get off.

*** ADDITIONAL READING ***

“Social Networks and the Risk of Gunshot Injury,” Papachristos, Andrew V et al. Journal of urban health : bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine vol. 89,6 (2012): 992-1003.

*** LINKS ***

Vsauce2:

Hosted and Produced by Kevin Lieber

Research and Writing by Matthew Tabor

Editing by John Swan

Huge Thanks To Paula Lieber

#education #vsauce #crime

[JohnnieHougaardNielsen]

The problem with such a risk score for shooting involvement is that the risk per person is very, very low, meaning that 300 times higher risk is still too low to have any predictive value at all. I occasionally choose to walk across a street. That multiplies my risk of being involved in an accident many times over, but it is still negligible, no reason to worry.

[evelyn-v.]

a few years ago, such an algorithm would have been considered a sure sign that one was living in a dystopia

[BlackGryphn]

LOVED this video... It really makes you think about causality, which is a complicated, yet hugely influential topic that is often overlooked.

[jrilo]

This whole concept reminds me of the anime "Psycho-Pass". It's a dystopia where you are given a number that measures your mental state and likelihood of commiting a crime and if it goes beyond a certain threshold, they begin to "hunt you down" for being too much of a threat to society. The thing is, the ones that hunt criminals down are actually people whose Psycho-Pass went well beyond that threshold and are treated as hounds, so that other citizens don't have to be involved with the killing.

[SonicKirbo]

"BOOBS." - Kevin Lieber, Vsauce2 Oct 24, 2022

[HarithBK]

my brothers childhood friend got involved with drugs and crime later in life but police still targeted him with "random" stops and harassing calls. so even if you drop a friendship police will still hound you since the computer see no difference nor does the local police office.

i would also like to point my brother has only ever been thrown in the drunk tank and been employed 95% of his adult life.

[Superstino]

I used to have an acquaintance who was a kleptomaniac. I myself work in security, and so I need a clean criminal record. I was deathly afraid he'd get me in trouble every time I went to the store with him... I tried to convince the guy to stop stealing, but I lacked the skills to help him with his stealing obsession. In the end I had no choice but to cut ties with him.

As people, I think we have a responsibility to help each other become better, but unfortunately there are limits to what we can do.

[thehobbitlestat]

Certain child protection divisions use a similar list. For example;
If one of my cousins were to lose their children due to poverty (the ACTUAL most common cause in my state), I and my siblings would then be scrutinized heavily and would then risk losing our children regardless of circumstance. I've seen it happen too many times.

[Siferzion]

Love the fact that Kevin just has a featureless black box.
Does he own that independently of his work, and thought "that'll be a good prop"?
Or more likely, did he purchase/make said box, thinking "wow I'm dealing with a lot of videos involving hidden algorithms, this will definitely come in handy"

[dbackscott]

A friend used to be a Maricopa County sheriff’s officer a while back. He said he was out in a rural community near Wickenburg and just started chitchatting with a guy for a few minutes (my friend is a very friendly, outgoing sort of guy). A couple days later they found the guy he was chatting with shot dead, apparently because the people of his community thought he was being a police informant. The actual contents of the conversation was frivolous stuff like sports scores and the weather.

My friend thought he was engaging in community relations, not signing a guy’s death warrant.

[fireworkbutterfly]

The part of the video that really disturbs me is someone shot him because the police visited him, like that is insane. Like if you see police visit someone, your first thought is, I should shoot them, then you actually do it?

[RelativelyBest]

Clearly, this algorithm has a major flaw: When calculating one's likelihood to be involved in gun violence, it did not factor in ones social proximity to _the police._

[wwickeddogg]

Cops: We can't just show up to someone's house to warn them, we need a new plan. Let's try sending a letter instead?

The Letter: Do not try to find us. This letter is a warning. You will be shot or you will shoot. Stay safe citizen!

[にゃ-cf]

Honestly the concept of this heat map system reminds me of the Sibyl System from PsychoPass, which is an AI that assigns a value to a person's mental state and deems whether or not they're a threat to society.

[legendgames]

3:25 he looks like he'd have a 4 digit score. Of course, since it's his algorithm, he'd set it to 0.

[d-m.n_--]

Worst part of the last question listed is that there is clearly a Social Status Number that can ruin you by doing the exact things we believe are Moral. As in helping people to lower their number, but raising yours so that later in life lower numbers will not associate with you due to your moderately high number, and those high numbers you tried helping not associating either because they stayed high and moral implications mean they are disassociating to try to help you back, or the lower numbers have to find someone else to average their score due to the diminishing returns of averages. All because of these numbers and their glass ceilings.
Tl;dr being the good guy here will mean that you will live alone and friendless.

[Kregelbagel]

Watching the first minute I was like "ya dude, that's the start to 'Person of Interest'"

[darrenbreydsor]

This is absolutely horrifying. Like, I knew this would be happening secretly, but actually seeing it is terrifying.

[spudd]

Seems like it would have been a better idea to send the social worker alone.

[fordprefect]

Sweet Jesus this program glows brighter than the NSA playing laser tag. This is one of the most extreme invasions of privacy I've heard of since the Snowden leaks.