AI and a Police Policy

Here we are on Thanksgiving, the best of all holidays. Nothing to do but eat and hang out together! OK, and cook and clean, too. But seriously -- compared to the insanity that is Christmas, Thanksgiving always seems so even-keeled and responsible. It's Bud Abbott to Christmas's Lou Costello.

We worked a half-day yesterday, but there were no kids. We had Professional Development devoted to issues surrounding Artificial Intelligence, which our school's powers-that-be have determined we should all learn how to use. My approach to AI is to ignore it as much as possible, but then, I am not a teacher and so don't need to worry too much about recognizing AI use in my students' papers and that kind of thing.

I went to a webinar about AI and energy use, which I thought would be interesting, and it was. We've all heard about massive server farms that suck up energy and endanger the environment, but this webinar -- by a former MIT librarian who now works for the University of Arizona, I believe -- took the opposite view. She said the amount of energy expended on AI is actually fairly small, and also gave several examples of ways that servers can be powered in an environmentally friendly manner. It was the techno-optimist approach, I'd say.

About lunchtime I walked home via the pedestrian bridge over the West Hampstead tube tracks, where I found these three giant graffiti eyes peering at me.

And today, Dave and I are off to Tenerife! Our flight doesn't leave until around noon, so we have the morning to pack and get ready. Not that there's much packing to do. We'll only be there for two days.

The British police have started a dubious new policy that I have to call out for being more harmful than positive. After the Southport stabbings in 2024, when a British man of African descent killed several little girls in a dance class, there were riots over rumors that the assailant was an illegal immigrant and/or asylum seeker. He wasn't, but that didn't stop people from threatening immigrants housed in temporary accommodation.

So the government decided to try to head off misinformation about such attacks by announcing the nationality and race or ethnicity of arrested individuals. Which is what led to two men recently arrested for stabbings on a train to be described as British, one black and one of "Caribbean descent." (The second man was subsequently released.)

I get announcing the nationality of offenders. It's still debatable whether it's a good idea, but I can see how it might avoid fueling unwarranted attacks on innocent immigrant populations.

But when I was a newspaper reporter, our policy was to never state a suspect's race in a news story, unless it was directly germane. After all, what purpose does it serve? Unless the police are trying to catch someone and they have a detailed description that includes race, mentioning race simply triggers racist responses in readers. If the offender is white, readers may imagine the crime as a result of someone's drug problem or schizophrenia. But if an offender is black, it often merely confirms pre-existing prejudices.

Unsurprisingly, anti-racist groups are saying that the new police policy is harmful. It seems to me that if the goal is to avoid needless violence against immigrants, it ought to be enough to say an offender is British. (Or not, which is the flip-side of this policy -- if police in any country announce a suspect is an asylum-seeker or immigrant, as is true in yesterday's shooting of two National Guardsmen in Washington, D.C., doesn't that risk fueling more violence and prejudice?)

A suspect's race or ethnicity -- separate from their nationality -- is entirely irrelevant.