ShotSpotter: AI at it's Worst

Sixty-five-year-old Michael Williams was released from jail last month after spending almost a year in jail on a murder charge. The "gunshot" sound that pointed the finger at Williams was initially classified as a firework by the AI. After the charges were dropped due to "insufficient evidence" it was revealed that one of ShotSpotter's human "reviewers" had changed the data to fit the crime, reclassifying the sound as a gunshot instead of a firework [1]. The case highlighted the dangers that the system poses to civil liberties and brings to question how much power we should give to AI "witnesses", especially those that can easily be tampered with. Shotspotter is a patented acoustic gunshot detection system of microphones, algorithms, and human reviewers that alerts police to potential gunfire [2].