The injured teenage survivor of a January 2025 shooting at a Nashville, Tennessee high school recently sued the manufacturer of an “AI gun detection” system that failed to detect the handgun that left two dead, including the shooter.
According to the lawsuit, which was filed in Davidson County court last month, the security company Omnilert either knew or should have known that there were “significant operational limitations in its gun detection system that could result in detection failures during actual emergencies, including limitations based on camera placement, proximity of the weapon to camera sensors, camera angle, lighting, and weapon visibility.”
Omnilert cofounder Ara Bagdasarian declined Ars’ invitation to answer questions about the lawsuit. System Integrations, the other defendant in the case, which resold the Omnilert system, also did not respond to Ars’ request for comment.
Even the greatest most infallible gun detection system imaginable can be defeated by having the gun inside a plastic bag.
They are making backpacks required as clear plastic these days.
So once again the United States has attempted a complicated technical solution to a legal problem.
Why don’t you just implement safe gun laws. You don’t even have to ban people from owning guns, although that would be a good idea. You just need to have basic background checks on gun purchases.
We do have basic background checks on most purchases.
But then we can’t have draconian ass surveillance funded by Epstein Predators, oh the horror!
Background checks are good, but they aren’t a solution to school shootings. Those are almost all parents giving kids guns or having shitty storage practices.
Perhaps a tendency not to give your kids guns would be part of the background check, other countries managing.
Using AI to stop school shootings it the type of idiot idea Sasha Baron Cohen would get a tech bro to unironically support. So much news these days feels like black comedy or satire
Not quite right. These types of ideas have existed for quite some time and have been used many many times in warfare by US military+allies. This was one of the core things that necessiated a company like palantir.
The only caveat is that, historically when these systems failed, it usually killed brown people which nobody really care about. Take the example of school bombing in iran or gaza genocide.
The problem is that the tolerance for error in warfare is always very high, anything can be written as “collatoral”. But even a small error (like one kid dying) is too much inside a state.
That’s why palantir in non military settings is disasterous.
TLDR: AI did better than expected, the problem was that, a white kid in USA died rather than a brown one in a third world country.
Ive been hearing SBC having been acting weird politically recently, hes apparently a very pro-zionist.
I am so tired of AI being shoved into everything and then people surprised when it doesn’t work. There’s no AI I think that could have detected a small firearm easily concealed. Hell as it is with legal concealed carry you can’t tell who is legally carrying as it is even with some of the most observant eyes watching.
People (and by this I mean the company) keep think that AI can give actual answers. It can’t. It’s a non-detrrminustic system, but they want it to behave deterministically. I’m sure the engineers gave the probability stats up to the business and marketing, who then immediately lowered their pants and shit on them, and then rolled it out as the perfect amazing product
The people who profit from this company don’t think that. They think that dumb school administrators think that, and will spend money on it.
There’s no AI I think that could have detected a small firearm easily concealed.
The idea with these kinds of systems are meant to allow early warning when possible.
No system is going to be 100%.
The cheap system I have with a Google Coral and FOSS software is pretty good about detecting people and dogs from my camera streams. Sometimes it detects my one dog as a small bear if I haven’t cut his hair recently.
Having such systems as a later if defense is good. As the only defense, not so much.
AI in this context is useless though, you could paint marker “not a gun” on the side of a gun and guess what would happen.
It has some uses, but 95% of what is being used for and 100% of the data centers aren’t it.
you could paint marker “not a gun” on the side of a gun and guess what would happen.
It would flag it as a gun. How do I know? I worked on and developed a similar system at one point. It worked extremely well. We weren’t an American company and ultimately covid killed us (it was US American orgs that were the most interested in our stuff).
It has some uses, but 95% of what is being used for and 100% of the data centers aren’t it.
Do you think LLMs are being used for this sort of thing? Putting aside the sheer technical mountain of a hurdle that slapping an LLM vision model on top of dozens and dozens of real-time camera streams, the hardware requirements would put the company out of business before they made their first sale.
Computer vision models, which are NOT LLMs, have been around for quite a while now and are very good at doing one thing and one thing only. And they’ll do it well for a miniscule fraction of what it takes to run an LLM.
No, datacentres are not being used for real-time gun detection. The company might have other kinds of infrastructure located in a DC, but not the main video processing hardware.
Do you think LLMs are being used for this sort of thing?
Yes. It took all of five seconds to find out too.
No, datacentres are not being used for real-time gun detection
You’ve already been wrong once, care to try for two?
Yes. It took all of five seconds to find out too.
Didn’t I just say that slapping an LLM vision model on to dozens of camera streams would be a near impossible technical hurdle?
I never said vLLM models don’t exist. I said they’re impractical for this use case.
You’ve already been wrong once, care to try for two?
Haven’t been wrong yet. You on the other hand…
There are several examples of exactly what I said, contradicting your repeated claim. Since I don’t want to talk to someone with the conversational ability of Donald Trump demanding things be true in spite of evidence they’re not im going to be blocking you now. Have a nice day.
Using a LLM for detecting a specific object on an image is possible but stupid: if your object is always the same (like in this case) it’s several orders of magnitude cheaper to train once on that specific object then use the computer vision model running directly on the local server that’s recording the video.
Otherwise:
- the api costs would be colossal, 0.001$ per each image, at 30 fps it’s $100 per hour, nobody would pay that
- The detection latency would be several seconds vs almost instant
- Without internet connection the system wouldn’t work
Use cases for LLM-based image recognition is if the object changes at every request or it’s ultra specific with brands and colors
if your object is always the same (like in this case)
It isn’t the same though. A large gauge shotgun and a small gauge pistol are pretty different looking. Compare those to a .22 rifle with a scope, and those to a decked out ar15. That’s a lot of different always the sames. What if it’s a revolver? Or has a folded stock? Or a sawed off stock? Will it recognize a derringer or a mac10 with a large capacity mag as guns?
We can because they make us dead. We have valid reason to fear them which is a great motivator for most species to learn to recognize the danger. You’d still recognize a ring gun as a gun, without getting specifically trained to do so a machine will identify it as jewelry.
A large gauge shotgun and a small gauge pistol are pretty different looking. Compare those to a .22 rifle with a scope, and those to a decked out ar15. That’s a lot of different always the sames. What if it’s a revolver? Or has a folded stock? Or a sawed off stock? Will it recognize a derringer or a mac10 with a large capacity mag as guns?
You seem to think that computer vision models can only be trained on a single thing. You simply train your modem on as many object types as you want it to be aware of. That’s it.
so, train the computer vision model for a gun and train again for a shotgun. Run the two detection models at the same time.
Your approach is the typical “but if you really want you can use an atomic bomb to kill mosquitoes” - yes, you could do that, but nobody is paying $1 mil/year in inference costs (+some expensively licensed software to wrap around that) when it can be done locally with a $300 GPU (+ some expensively licensed software to wrap around that)
Wasn’t there also a separate incident of a kid holding a harmless item (food?) that an AI system tagged as a gun?
Crazy crap
Bananas are not joke.
A tactical banana can absolutely change the outcome of many scenarios.
Monty Python debunked this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuVudN_BDjQ
Wow my apologies for spreading such uneducated misinformation. The evidence presented in your documentary is irrefutable.
I keep a couple of ripe ones on hand at all times in case of a home invasion type situation.
My drunk ass read that as homie invasion and frankly that makes more sense anyways.
Sage advice shared by a lowly plumber
This training video really helped me, I’m 6-1 against banana-wielding assailants
Oops, both companies are suddenly restructured under new ownership (a baby new llc) so now there’s nobody to sue.
Watch and see.
Can’t wait for this be LLM run companies with 100% ownership by humans, so there’s no liability but the board controls everything.
The next vendor contract will say “shot detector is for entertainment purposes only”.
If it works for orphaned wells and patent trolls it’ll work for this
The director of Citizen Kane never did that!
Brick by brick!
Why is this any better than a metal detector?
Asking the real questions here. My guess would be: they didn’t have metal detectors, the metal detectors they had reached end-of-life, or preexisting metal detectors failed to integrate into a modern, unified surveillance system. And so the use of AI analytics tools, atop (preexisting) camera systems seemed more hassle-free (a subscription-based software integration) and cost-effective in the short term; that is if the unproven compromise bares any trust…
Metal detectors in schools are dystopian and nobody who works in a school wants them.
Metal detectors in schools are dystopian
Sounds like they fit right in in the country where children are regularly and routinely murdered while at school and society at large is ok with it.
AI is so much better and not dystopian 🙏
The detection processing is completely invisible. It’s just a tool. How it’s used is what determines if it’s dystopian or not. Seeing the state the US is in, I’d argue the country itself is dystopian and this system is trying to somewhat protect people from that dystopia.
@[email protected] @[email protected] If you install multiple gates side-by-side, and let students leave any metal objects in their lockers, I don’t think it’s that restrictive. But in my country of residence these cases are so rare, considering these systems is a first for me, so I’m by no means an expert.
Metal detectors are a logistical nightmare in a school
Worse than getting shot?
How much of the time do they stop you getting shot?
On average, yes.
This is the logical endpoint of technology capitalism. Even authority figures have so many constant draws on their attention? And so many suffer from un-or-under-diagnosed attention issues, coupled with constant and unrelenting anxiety about performance and about the world around them collapsing, that “outsource thinking so that I have less of it to do” is the hot new commodity
What’s the problem? It’s still gotta be like, 99.9% accurate in detecting guns, right?
That’s fine, right? What are the chances that the 0.1% of guns that get through will happen here, right? Right?
In all seriousness (in case you couldn’t sense the sarcasm), I bet the company will stand by that 99.9%, and will win.
Yeah, then they have to limit the entrance to the school, add wait times to get in because of processing, and it gives a convenient mass of students for wannabe shooters
Didn’t that guy did an AMA on Reddit years ago? Kinda remember something like this being dunked on as another surveillance company trying to cash out on school shootings
Well, the suit is by a minor, so their name is being withheld and this is from January 2025, so the reddit AMA was probably a different school shooting survivor.
Omnilert cofounder Ara Bagdasarian
I mean this person
If there is, I can’t find it. Sounds like an AMA where the person would get dragged over the coals, but who knows with nuReddit.
Soon: ai not meant to detect guns or prevent shootings, read fine print Court: OK cool, case dismissed
Next up: “AI has no duty to protect and serve”
I guarantee their contract already has a legal disclaimer for this exact scenario.
Not hot dog
