Police departments are often among the tech industry's earliest adopters of new products like drones, facial recognition, predictive software, and now artificial intelligence. Some police departments that have already adopted AI speech-to-text programs are testing a new, more comprehensive tool: software that uses technology similar to ChatGPT to automatically generate police reports. On August 26, The Associated Press reported that many officers are already “addicted” to the AI-generated tool, which claims it can shave 30 to 45 minutes off routine administrative tasks.
First announced by Axon in April, DraftOne is billed as “the latest giant leap toward our ambitious goal of reducing gun deaths among police and civilians.” The company, known for its Tasers and police body cameras, claims that initial trials have saved users an hour of paperwork a day.
“When officers can spend more time connecting with their communities and taking care of themselves, both physically and mentally, they are able to make better decisions which leads to more effective de-escalation efforts,” Axon said in the release.
The company said at the time that Draft One is built on Microsoft's Azure OpenAI platform and automatically transcribes police body camera audio and “leverages AI to rapidly draft reports.” Reports are “rigorously developed from audio transcripts” following Draft One's “baseline model” to prevent speculation or embellishment. After any significant additional information is added, officers must sign off on the report for accuracy before it is sent for another round of human review. Each report is also flagged if AI was involved in its writing.
(Related: ChatGPT is generating weird nonsense (more than usual).)
Speaking to The Associated Press on Monday, Axon AI product manager Noah Spitzer-Williams claims DraftOne uses “the same underlying technology as ChatGPT.” ChatGPT's baseline generative large-scale language model, designed by OpenAI, has frequently been criticized for its tendency to mislead or provide false information in its responses. But Spitzer-Williams likens Axon's capabilities to “having access to more knobs and dials” than those available to average ChatGPT users. By adjusting its “creativity dial,” DraftOne is said to help make police reports more factual and avoid generative AI's ongoing hallucination problem.
Draft One's scope of application currently appears to vary by department. Oklahoma City Police Lt. Jason Bussert claimed his 1,170-officer department currently only uses Draft One for “minor incident reports” that don't involve arrests. But in Lafayette, Indiana, the Associated Press reported that the police department serving the town's roughly 71,000 residents is free to use Draft One for “all incidents.” Meanwhile, professors at nearby Purdue University argue that generative AI isn't reliable enough to handle potentially life-altering situations, such as confrontations with police.
“The large-scale language models that underpin tools like ChatGPT are not designed to generate truth; rather, they string together plausible sentences based on predictive algorithms,” Lindsay Weinberg, a clinical associate professor at Purdue University who specializes in digital and technology ethics, said in a statement to Popular Science.
(Related: Study finds ChatGPT accuracy is deteriorating.)
Weinberg, the director of the Tech Justice Lab, also argues that “almost every algorithmic tool you can think of has been repeatedly demonstrated to reproduce and amplify existing racial injustices.”Experts have documented many instances of racial and gender bias in large-scale language models over the years.
“Currently, in the context of a legal system that supports and condones mass incarceration (of marginalized people), the use of a tool that 'facilitates' the writing of police reports should be of serious concern to those who care about privacy, civil rights, and justice,” Weinberg said.
In an email to Popular Science, a representative from OpenAI referred inquiries to Microsoft. At the time of writing, Axon, Microsoft, and the Lafayette Police Department had not responded to requests for comment.
