Police used AI facial recognition to wrongly arrest TN woman for crimes in ND

https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/29/us/angela-lipps-ai-facial-recognition

67•ourmandave•1h ago

Comments

jqpabc123•1h ago

AI is a liability issue waiting to happen. And this is just another example.

garyfirestorm•1h ago

It’s a tool. Used incorrectly will lead to errors. Just like a hammer, used incorrectly could hit the users finger.

happytoexplain•1h ago

There is enormous variability in how hard a tool is to use correctly, how likely it is to go wrong, and how severe the consequences are. AI has a wide range on all those variables because its use cases vary so widely compared to a hammer.

The use case here is police facial recognition. Not hitting nails. The parent wasn't saying "AI is a liability" with no context.

mikkupikku•1h ago

When somebody uses a tool to hurt somebody, they need to be held accountable. If I smack you with a hammer, that needs to be prosecuted. Using AI is no different.

The problem here is incidental to the tool; it was done by the cops and therefore nobody will be held accountable.

tovej•28m ago

Systems are also a tool. Whoever institutes and helps build the system that systematically results in harm is also responsible.

That would be the vendors, the system planners, and the institutions that greenlit this. It would also include the larger financial tech circle that is trying to drive large scale AI adoption. Like Peter Thiel, who sees technology as an "alternative to politics". I.e. a way to circumvent democracy [1]

[1] https://stavroulapabst.substack.com/p/techxgeopolitics-18-te...

suzzer99•1h ago

Dynamite is a tool. But we don't hand it out to anyone who wants to play with it.

mikkupikku•1h ago

We used to until quite recently. Anybody could buy dynamite at the hardware store. We had to end this because of criminals using it to hurt people.

jqpabc123•1h ago

Look for AI to follow a similar trajectory over time.

mikkupikku•58m ago

Yes, regulation is inevitable.

jfengel•36m ago

Regulation is impossible. The AI barons literally control the federal government, so not even state regulations get tried.

GaryBluto•51m ago

Impossible at this point. You cannot download dynamite.

jfengel•37m ago

Except this time the criminals are police.

skeeter2020•1h ago

AI feels closer to a firearm than a hammer when accessing law enforcement's ability to quickly do massive, unrecoverable harm.

jqpabc123•1h ago

Used incorrectly will lead to errors.

Only one small little problem --- there is no way to tell if you are using it "correctly".

The only way to be sure is to not use it.

Using it basically boils down to, "Do you feel lucky?".

The Fargo police didn't get lucky in this case. And now the liability kicks in.

jfengel•38m ago

Now the "qualified" immunity kicks in.

jqpabc123•30m ago

We will find out. But relying on AI is likely to cost the city of Fargo in one way or another. They say they have already stopped using AI and returned to good old fashioned human investigation.

https://www.lawlegalhub.com/how-much-is-a-wrongful-arrest-la...

nkrisc•31m ago

Some basic investigatory police work (the kind they did before AI) would have revealed the mistake before an innocent woman’s life was destroyed.

jqpabc123•24m ago

Yes. But doing the investigation negates much of the incentive for using AI.

Look for similar to play out elsewhere --- using unreliable tools is not a good, responsible business plan. And lawyers are just waiting to press the point.

bornfreddy•14m ago

AI can provide leads. Someone still needs to verify them and decide.

tgv•56m ago

This tool, however, is specifically built for mass surveillance. It serves no other purpose. The tool is broken, and everybody knows it. The tool makers are at least as guilty as those who use it.

cyanydeez•51m ago

The tool, like Google search, is likely biased towards returning results regardless of confidence.

MattDaEskimo•44m ago

What kind of outcome results from misuse? Clearly a hammer's misuse has very little in common with a global, hivemind network used in high-stake campaigns.

Now, if I misused a hammer and it hurt everyone's thumb in my country, then maybe what you said would have some merit.

Otherwise, I'd say it's an extremely lazy argument

gtowey•44m ago

It's the opposite, it's absolution from liability. "The AI did it" is the ultimate excuse to avoid accepting responsibility and consequences.

jqpabc123•39m ago

Courts are already refusing to accept this excuse.

https://pub.towardsai.net/the-air-gapped-chronicles-the-cour...

Hizonner•38m ago

... which is why the institutions that assign responsibility and consequences need to make it really clear that excuse won't fly. With illustrative examples.

mitchbob•1h ago

Earlier discussion (405 comments):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47356968

casey2•1h ago

Now cruel people wield a two-tiered shield. It's not an accident that this happened to a woman, but make no mistake they are coming for men next.

jstanley•59m ago

You think they deliberately chose to do this to a woman? Why?

cyanydeez•51m ago

Probably just reading the room, with States like texas making abortions illegal and allowing random citizens from enforcing that.

Famously, abortions are a woman thing.

Anyway, looking through the facts, it's just some random woman. There's better evidence that these facial recognition systems are much worse at minorities rather than genders.

Interesting biases are own-gendeR: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11841357/

Racial bias:

https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/unmasking-bias...

Miss rates:

https://par.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/10358566

Although you can probably interpret the facts differently, we've seen how any search function gets enshittified: Once people get used to searching for things, they tend to select something that returns results vs something that fails to return results.

Rather than the user blaming themselves, they blame the searcher. As such, any search system overtime will bias towards returning search (eg, Outlook), rather than accuracy.

So if these systems easily miss certain classes of people, women, minorities, they'll more likely be surfaced as inaccurate matches rather than men who'll have a higher confidence of being screened out.

That's how I interpret this 2 second commment.

oopsiremembered•31m ago

Money quote from someone quoted in the article:

"[I]t’s not just a technology problem, it’s a technology and people problem."

I can't. I just can't.

firefoxd•25m ago

Without even looking at the AI part, I have a single question: Did anybody investigate? That's it.

Whether it's AI that flagged her, or a witness who saw her, or her IP address appeared on the logs. Did anybody bothered to ask her "where were you the morning of july 10th between 3 and 4pm. But that's not what happened, they saw the data and said "we got her".

But this is the worst part of the story:

> And after her ordeal, she never plans to return to the state: “I’m just glad it’s over,” she told WDAY. “I’ll never go back to North Dakota.”

That's the lesson? Never go back to North Dakota. No, challenge the entire system. A few years back it was a kid accused of shoplifting [0]. Then a man dragged while his family was crying [1]. Unless we fight back, we are all guilty until cleared.

[0]: https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/29/apple_sis_lawsuit/

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23628394

tlogan•14m ago

This is a weak or misleading story about AI.

First, the detective used the FaceSketchID system, which has been around since around 2014. It is not new or uniquely tied to modern AI.

Second, the system only suggests possible matches. It is still up to the detective to investigate further and decide whether to pursue charges. And then it is up to court to issue the warrant.

The real question is why she was held in jail for four months. That is the part that I do not understand. My understanding is that there is 30-day limit (the requesting state must pick up the defendant within 30 day). Regarding the individual involved, Angela Lipps, she has reportedly been arrested before, so it is possible she was on parole. So maybe they were holding her because of that?

Can someone clarify how that process works?

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Police used AI facial recognition to wrongly arrest TN woman for crimes in ND

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