jeffwSEPTA will officially use AI to ticket cars parked illegally in bus lanes
Tb0n3AI? wtf why?
Minority report but for parking tickets.
You will just wake up with a ticket because it knows you were going to park in a bus lane that day.
Just another day for the PPA
iWidjiMy best guess as an AI engineer is to detect the difference between cars that are parked vs cars on the road that are stopping at a light and then take the picture at the right time. I don’t think the article says the bus drivers initiate the photos — presumably SEPTA would rather have drivers drive than framing the perfect shot — so it makes sense to have AI fit in there.
SEPTA already records pretty much any angle they can to protect from a large number of inane lawsuits.
It’s not “are you recording” but more highlighting what to look at. It would take so many union labor paid hours to sift through all those videos to find a violation. It’s probably cheaper, as crazy as it sounds, to train an AI Model to catch the violations and log it so an employee only has to sift through likely violators.
I also wouldn’t be surprised if the PPA is looking into this model themselves for… other reasons.
Right, not disagreeing, just adding context
Flat Pluto SocietyYeah, this is basically just giving an AI pattern recognition service access to camera feeds that are already there. And from what I’ve read, cars that are flagged at violators will be reviewed by a person before the system actually issues a ticket. If the privacy aspects are handled appropriately (big if there), this is probably going to be a pretty good system, I think.
Yeah normally I’m not a fan of more big brother esque security but given the parking situation in Philly… I’ll shut up and nod.
I’m here for this. Finally a positive feedback loop where people are discouraged from illegally parking, transit becomes more efficient, and SEPTA gains a new funding source
I just wish it didn’t have to go through the PPA
I like the idea in theory, and it’s one of the seemingly rare good uses of AI. My concern is that the bill doesn’t have any requirement for outside auditing of the system, and as far as I’ve seen, the data use/storage policies are nowhere to be found for public review.
I emailed my councilperson about this, but haven’t gotten a response yet.
Thanks for your insight. I will dig deeper into this as well
Surely you’re not implying you think the PPA could abuse this?
I’m actually not nearly as worried about PPA abusing this as I am about the company that administers the software.