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"Our system is 90% accurate if you don't count the 15-20 innocent people taken out for each hit". I know they're measuring the accuracy of target identification but that's laughable when used in this context.

For 100 targets, 90 are 'correct', plus 20x civs per-target is 90/2100 or 4% real accuracy.

Say you use a model that's only 50% accurate and limit yourself to 10 civs per-target, you're at 50/1100 or 4.5% accuracy!

I guess my point is that no self-respecting datascient would release a 50% accurate model, let alone one used to make life or death decisions and yet, in the application of this model, decisions made by humans about its use has made it no better than doing exactly that.



These kinds of accurate numbers of acceptably killed innocents is really hurting a specific part of my sympathy brain somehow.

"we really need to missile this guy or he will kill more" vs "well we got 37 badies and also kim and yashonda, damn i really liked yashonda"

Actually after writing this my mind went farther, "since yashonda was a good person we actually have a whole bunch of hard facts about how good a person she actually was, did a lot of help for her community and was a real pillar of helping the next generation of kids be less violent...too bad we didn't add any of that info into the kill-algorithm "




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