[jl6]

> In the year ending March 2026, more than 6,400 migrants claiming to be children were age assessed at the border, with 43% found to be adults, according to Home Office data.

Whatever method the border force used to determine this, I cannot imagine how AI is going to be more accurate.

[pibaker]

It's less about accuracy and more about who gets the blame when mistakes happen. And computers are excellent scapegoats for this kind of situations because when mistakes happen, you can just throw your hands up and say, well, the computer sucks, and no actual human will bear any consequences. It's not like the computer is going to fight back or anything.

Since this is the UK, see also the entire post office scandal. It was often blamed on a faulty accounting software developed by Fujitsu, even though the software put no one in jail. Human prosecutors did. But of course the British state apparatus will not admit to that, so all we hear is this story about software errors that conveniently ignores any human involvement in the process.

[tialaramex]

Actually the humans come up all the time. The problem was that as always somehow highly paid executives conveniently don't know anything and had no idea anything was happening. Several Post Office executives testified that they had no idea they were ordering people to be prosecuted, they were just completely incompetent and signed whatever was put in front of them, while being paid a huge sum of money. If they received specific documentation telling them Horizon was busted and mustn't be relied on they mislaid it, and oops, forgot to take any action as a result.

Likewise politicians supervising those executives somehow conveniently didn't ask any questions, forgot what they'd been told and generally had no idea what was happening.

Some of the crimes so often committed by executives who walk free needs to delete Mens Rea so that when executives say they had no idea the prosecutor doesn't even skip a beat because it doesn't matter. For comparison in UK criminal law if you have sex with a ten year old, and you try to argue† you thought they were of age and also you had their consent, the prosecutors will move on because you haven't actually defended yourself at all, sex with the ten year old was rape by definition, the fact is the crime, what you believed about it was irrelevant, you're done.

† If you have defence counsel they'll strongly urge you not to try this because it can't work

[LtWorf]

And you believe it?

[tialaramex]

Of course I don't believe them. But the criminal standard isn't "balance of evidence" it is "beyond a reasonable doubt" and I can't say that I have no doubt she's lying.

Eliminating Mens Rea would solve the problem. If they don't want to go to jail they can try being more competent, or, I expect, they can try not being crooks and what do you know all the crime they supposedly "weren't responsible for" magically stops. Huh.

[spwa4]

In both US and UK immigration law isn't law. It's government edicts. Which means parliament chooses not to have a say and just leaves it 100% in the hands of the executive (Prime minister or president respectively).

Mens rea is beside the point, until the government violates other laws (and enough for famously reluctant to convict the government courts to take notice)

Likewise, proof doesn't matter.

[zdragnar]

The process, per the article, is that a border agent makes a determination, and if it is not what the applicant claims, then a social worker takes over to make a final determination.

That is a massive time sink for social workers, and the appeal of having an automated system is pretty obvious. Considering that it is already all largely guesswork, I'm not really sure that "more accurate" is even an acceptance criteria for them right now- they'd probably be very happy with "mostly the same accuracy".

Of course, the social workers are opposing being taken out of the loop, but I can't imagine that there isn't already plenty of work for them elsewhere in the UK.

[woodrowbarlow]

"a computer can never be held accountable, therefore a computer must never make a [legal] decision"

in my observation: when humans are automated out of a process due to the human element being inconvenient, the perceived efficiency gains are often because wronged individuals have less recourse in the automated system.

[cjs_ac]

There is a widespread belief (on which I am personally undecided and not interested in attempts to sway me one way or the other) in the UK that asylum seekers already have too much access to recourse. Making it easier and cheaper to reject asylum applications within the requirements of international human rights law is probably an implicit aim in this project.

[iso1631]

When you put the computer in charge, it tends to say no

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0YGZPycMEU

[SpicyLemonZest]

It might be helpful to be a bit more specific about what's being automated. One story from the underlying report (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/687f6f9dfdc19...):

> In another example, a Vietnamese national was initially given the benefit of the doubt at the first triage that took place in the waiting area. The CIO and social worker commented on his “soft face”, which they said was consistent with his claimed age of 17. However, his “developed shoulders” and “huge hands” cast doubt for them, as did a “tiny bit of stubble” that they noticed when they asked him to raise his chin. The CIO and social worker told inspectors afterwards that Vietnamese young people were typically difficult to assess because they “did not have the same ageing process”, and “did not show signs of ageing”. When asked where the evidence for this was, they said that it was knowledge gained through their own experience. The social worker said, “It is just genetics”, but was unable to support this with evidence.

If I had to choose between being judged by an AI model and being judged based on ad hoc stereotypes of what my race's shoulders and hands typically look like, I'd definitely pick the AI.

[ninalanyon]

Isn't the AI going to use the same ad hoc stereotypes?

[SpicyLemonZest]

I understand that "no" isn't the answer you're looking for but I'm not sure what else to say in response. A computer system is the opposite of an ad hoc stereotype; it can be directly tested for problems and those problems can be corrected if found.

It's a problem when people use this kind of system to circumvent the question of "do we have to make this judgment at all". We shouldn't, for example, predict from someone's photo how likely they are to commit a crime, so we're rightly skeptical of people who try to argue about system X or system Y might better predict it.

But as the source article covers, the UK's asylum laws require it to make this age judgment, because child migrants are entitled to special programs separate from adult migrants on account of their vulnerable status.

[LtWorf]

Are you familiar with how AI gets trained?

[giancarlostoro]

Purely curious if there's better ways, like I know X Rays can get us pretty close for children and adolescents, but that might not be the best way to do it, I wonder if there's other alternatives that are low cost.

[zdragnar]

I wouldn't think so. Legal adulthood is a pretty arbitrary line in the sand.

[giancarlostoro]

What? The issue is people lying about their age I am just asking if theres a simple biological way to determine age, barring medical conditions that might skew someones age that is.

[zdragnar]

I guess that was my point in a roundabout way- they lie about their age to pretend to be under the legal adulthood age limit.

Some animals do have fairly reliable (if invasive to utilize) means of telling their age- I think their tusks grow rings like trees, which could be counted to measure years.

Humans don't really have any equivalent that I'm aware of. There are approximations such as bone fusing and cartilage density that can tell if a person is in the neighborhood of 18 years old, but I don't think it is sufficient for legal purposes.

For further reading, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2465138/#!po=3.3333... discusses using MRIs to determine age, with a roughly 1% false measurement rate on a very specific set of individuals with confounding factors- ethnic differences, nutritional habits, physical activity etc.

[HexPhantom]

I think the only plausible argument for AI here is not "it knows age better than humans," but "it might be more consistent than ad hoc visual judgments by different officers"

[SilverElfin]

Why can’t it be more accurate? Sure just doing it on facial features will have some limit on accuracy but it may be less biased and more accurate than human judgment (not always but it’s possible). I think you could then confirm any finding of falsified age using more expensive techniques - like analyzing medical imaging, dental records in particular. That can be the “confirmation” step to improve the overall accuracy of the process.

[karmasimida]

Fixed it for you:

I cannot imagine how AI is going to be more INaccurate.

[king_zee]

it depends, i'll concede that AI is unfortunately incredibly good at pattern matching, if you give it 100 billion pictures of a 13 year old, and 100 billion pictures of a "not 13 year old", you'd be surprised how accurate the pattern matching can get

[ericmcer]

6,400 is maybe a tiny fraction of the total. Maybe AI will allow them to have way more breadth?