What a weird thing to say. The headline is supposed to be the takeaway of the material. People are certainly allowed to discuss an article's choice of headline (which is what people remember), and should give no care to you telling them to go elsewhere.
I didn’t say that discussions about headlines aren’t allowed.
I pointed out that this thread is a discussion about the content of the article, and I prefer to discuss content in a discussion about content. I would also point out that the argument about the content of the headline is just a repeat of the argument I was rebutting. It added absolutely nothing to the discussion.
People with any knowledge of publishing know that the headline writer and the article writer are two different people with two different goals. It doesn’t make sense to use a headline written for one purpose by one author to critique the content of an article by a different author.
As to the assertion that a headline is “what people remember”, that has never been my experience. Plenty of people have asked me if I have read the piece in x publication about y topic. No one has ever asked me if I read the article headlined z. The headline is so inconsequential that many reputable publications will use multiple headlines for the same article depending on when and where it is seen.
If you weren’t aware of this, apologies for being so direct. Now you know. Stop remembering only the headlines. The article is the content, not the headline.
I very much agree with what you say on automation bias.
Certain technology just has too much potential to be misused / people repeatedly prove they can't use it properly. It also comes with risks of making authoritarian takeover easier.
However, here, it seems they used Flock a bit like a regular ANPR. The actions they took independent of Flock show there are better stories to use to criticise this technology.
I don't think ANPR systems should be held responsible for matching number-plates or car models. That's their job, and police have had access to such tools for many many years. It seems relatively clear that Flock was providing a commonplace technology here, that was misused.
Flock is not an AI. That they have AI features on certain products does not mean "Flock" is an AI. That's the fallacy of composition.
Flock does have AI components (this one seems LLM based). Basically every ANPR system will also use some level of AI.
Also, on "reality would like a word". Why not just speak normally instead of using what seems like a high-school grade comeback?
The main Flock related issue here is that officers treat results that come out of the systems as gospel. The same thing has happened with face recognition systems. There is also the broader issue of access controls to Flock, 5A, and whether places should be building up a technology so powerful (surveillance infrastructure can easily be used for evil).
I said that because your position is absurd, and clearly false. Flock is an AI company, period. They use a multitude of different ai types in their “AI OS”.
And the issue is absolutely not just cops taking what they say as gospel; that’s a teeny tiny itty bitty fraction of the issue, which is in itself reductive. This is a massively multifaceted issue and to state otherwise means you don’t understand the scope.
I have made no comments on this thread before the one above.
So saying you said something because my non-existent position is "absurd" and "clearly false" indicates massive levels of confusion.
You then go on to imply I haven't read the article, using an acronymised swear (I'm not a pious person but clearly directing a swear to someone makes a message come off as aggressive), even though your understanding of what I said is based off non-existent messages. (This is quite ironic).
Flock is a company. Companies are a type of organisation: it makes no sense to describe a company as AI, as AI is a type of computer system. It may make sense to say Flock is an AI-based company, but calling them "AI" in itself makes no sense.
I can't find anything indicating that an LLM was used in this case, and this county seems to mainly have Falcon cameras (https://www.scribd.com/document/983922612/250730110407Flock-...). Reverse engineering seems to indicate these are powered by non-LLM AIs like Tensorflow vision NNs. These have been around for ages, and notably no-one is alleging these models hallucinated etc.
People also (perhaps wrongly) use "Flock" to refer to the camera system. CrendKing explicitly calls "Flock" a "camera system". A system of cameras is not AI, and the point of the comment seems to be that it's inappropriate to bring up LLM related AI fears about this system.
What a strange strawman. You are deciding now to substitute a different complaint than what was originally sense, because it is simply true that if you don't want to use Apple Intelligence, you don't need to.
The complaint now shifts to that you'll still have files on your system, or can't control exactly what models are stored on your computer. Apple has reasons not to give this fine control: what you have on HN is a group of people who are vehemently anti-AI, use Apple products, and still want features very specific to their control of the system.
Apple caters to the general user. If they think a setting is going to be confusing or likely to be misused, they won't implement it. People know the reality that if Apple intelligence is successful and if this feature is implemented, the general user won't know which parts of their workflow use which features. Removing the models will be advertised as a cheap hack to save storage, and people will be confused when they can't turn intelligence on again.
The fact that the core premise of the article (repeated in the title and first sentence) is about "phoning home":
> The nice thing about keeping a blog is that I can say at precisely 9:51am, Wednesday 5th February 2025, I discovered that macOS 15.3 had enabled a feature that was phoning home every 15 minutes with personal data. And that I said “no” and turned it off.
The entire basis of this complaint is not understanding the difference between "duration" and "interval". And not being able to click the link that is given to you in the settings menu or just search Apple's docs for the setting ( https://support.apple.com/en-mn/guide/mac-help/mchlfc0d4779/... )
This is literally the main point of the article:
"The nice thing about keeping a blog is that I can say at precisely 9:51am, Wednesday 5th February 2025, I discovered that macOS 15.3 had enabled a feature that was phoning home every 15 minutes with personal data. And that I said “no” and turned it off."
