SurveillanceMedium
NYC Subway AI Weapons Scanners Yield High False Positive Rate and Detect No Guns in Month-Long Pilot Test
- Occurred
- Oct 23, 2024
- Published
- Dec 30, 2024
- Source
- AI Incident Database
Summary
NYC implemented an AI enabled weapons scanner for a month-long pilot with limited success. Despite not finding any weapons during the September 2024 testing phase, there were 118 false positives in which a person was searched under suspicion of carrying a weapon with no actual gun detections.
Developers
- Evolv Technology
Deployers
- New York City Government
- Law enforcement
Harmed parties
- New York City subway riders
Classification
Category confidence: 90%
Severity confidence: 85%
Rationale: AI surveillance system deployed in public transit with high false positive rate causing unnecessary searches.
Classifier: Qwen/Qwen3.5-35B-A3B-FP8