Wisdom of the Crowd

Thread Starter

spinnaker

Joined Oct 29, 2009
7,830
Anyone watching? It is a new show on CBS that is actually pretty good.

The show is about a software millionaire that has a daughter that is murdered. He develops a social networking app to help solve crime. For example they posted a photo of an automobile with no visible license plate but some unique features. People responded and the software analyzed the responses and put a weight on the response most likely to be accurate (probably matching similar responses).

This is sort of the Amber alert we have now but at a whole new level. I got to thinking. With the popularity of social networking, why wouldn't something like this work in real life? With some AI, I don't think it would be all that difficult to analyze responses.

It seems like it would be possible. The question, would you want something like this is it was possible? I do see certain problems in getting the general public involved on crime solving.
 

atferrari

Joined Jan 6, 2004
4,764
Anyone watching? It is a new show on CBS that is actually pretty good.

The show is about a software millionaire that has a daughter that is murdered. He develops a social networking app to help solve crime. For example they posted a photo of an automobile with no visible license plate but some unique features. People responded and the software analyzed the responses and put a weight on the response most likely to be accurate (probably matching similar responses).

This is sort of the Amber alert we have now but at a whole new level. I got to thinking. With the popularity of social networking, why wouldn't something like this work in real life? With some AI, I don't think it would be all that difficult to analyze responses.

It seems like it would be possible. The question, would you want something like this is it was possible? I do see certain problems in getting the general public involved on crime solving.
Well, Akinator keeps surprising people and it is not precissely new in terms of computing apps.
 

GopherT

Joined Nov 23, 2012
8,009
Anyone watching? It is a new show on CBS that is actually pretty good.

The show is about a software millionaire that has a daughter that is murdered. He develops a social networking app to help solve crime. For example they posted a photo of an automobile with no visible license plate but some unique features. People responded and the software analyzed the responses and put a weight on the response most likely to be accurate (probably matching similar responses).

This is sort of the Amber alert we have now but at a whole new level. I got to thinking. With the popularity of social networking, why wouldn't something like this work in real life? With some AI, I don't think it would be all that difficult to analyze responses.

It seems like it would be possible. The question, would you want something like this is it was possible? I do see certain problems in getting the general public involved on crime solving.
Anyone watching? It is a new show on CBS that is actually pretty good.

The show is about a software millionaire that has a daughter that is murdered. He develops a social networking app to help solve crime. For example they posted a photo of an automobile with no visible license plate but some unique features. People responded and the software analyzed the responses and put a weight on the response most likely to be accurate (probably matching similar responses).

This is sort of the Amber alert we have now but at a whole new level. I got to thinking. With the popularity of social networking, why wouldn't something like this work in real life? With some AI, I don't think it would be all that difficult to analyze responses.

It seems like it would be possible. The question, would you want something like this is it was possible? I do see certain problems in getting the general public involved on crime solving.

I could see the whole crowd-sourced crime fighting effort eventually circling the drain like the game show “Common Knowledge” (rules are explained with 4 minutes remaining in the SNL skit...

http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/common-knowledge/n9612?snl=1

.
 

Thread Starter

spinnaker

Joined Oct 29, 2009
7,830
I see good and bad. The show is accentuating the best of humanity.

Or the worst. There is one scene where a Muslim man is beat up simply because he was a person of interest in the case. People assumed he was the murder. The team that ran the social networking site blamed that on a hack of their site. I did not quite follow how him getting beat up had to do with the man getting beat up. May have had something to do with how the photo was reqaleased.
 

Thread Starter

spinnaker

Joined Oct 29, 2009
7,830
I could see the whole crowd-sourced crime fighting effort eventually circling the drain like the game show “Common Knowledge” (rules are explained with 4 minutes remaining in the SNL skit...

http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/common-knowledge/n9612?snl=1

.

They were basically doing that in the show. They spotted the real murderer and basically encircled him even though they were warned to stay away. If a somewhat true portrayal of what would happen in real life, it would be kind of frightening to see large groups act that way.
 

GopherT

Joined Nov 23, 2012
8,009
They were basically doing that in the show. They spotted the real murderer and basically encircled him even though they were warned to stay away. If a somewhat true portrayal of what would happen in real life, it would be kind of frightening to see large groups act that way.
I think the first crowd-sourced crime fighting was done in Salem, MA about 300 years ago.
 
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