Othram - General Discussion - #3

[Caring1]

Introducing Solvepedia (v0.1)

We’ve started testing something new: Solvepedia.org. It’s very early (v0.1), but the idea is to build a fully autonomous system that can learn, scale, and help expand what we know about missing and unidentified persons.

Wikipedia is an incredible resource, but it relies on manual contributions and strict notability rules, so many cases never get documented or don’t stay published. We’re exploring a different approach.

Long-term, we hope this system can:
• Collect and organize information across cases
• Continuously improve and expand coverage
• Potentially help surface connections between missing and unidentified persons

Would love your feedback. You can contribute directly or highlight text on any page to comment.

Take a look and let us know what you think.

https://solvepedia.org/

A search tool that could give one the option to automatically include all words that mean the same. A synomatic function of sort. Just made that up but if it could pick up all synonyms when you are searching a specific description.

For example, while searching acne, the search would also automatically include pockmarks, blemishes, etc.

Or for clothing, swimsuit would automatically include bathing suit, swim trunks, swim shorts, etc.

Necklace would include, gold chain, yellow metal chain, silver chain, white metal chain, etc.

Tennis shoes would also automatically include sneakers. I could go on but these are just some examples that could condense many searches into one or at least have the option to do so.

 

[othram]

A search tool that could give one the option to automatically include all words that mean the same. A synomatic function of sort. Just made that up but if it could pick up all synonyms when you are searching a specific description.

For example, while searching acne, the search would also automatically include pockmarks, blemishes, etc.

Or for clothing, swimsuit would automatically include bathing suit, swim trunks, swim shorts, etc.

Necklace would include, gold chain, yellow metal chain, silver chain, white metal chain, etc.

Tennis shoes would also automatically include sneakers. I could go on but these are just some examples that could condense many searches into one or at least have the option to do so.

This is the future!

 

[Caring1]

This is the future!

So looking forward to this. Cannot wait to explore.

 

[iulia]

Would love your feedback. You can contribute directly or highlight text on any page to comment.

Take a look and let us know what you think.

https://solvepedia.org/

RSBM

Hello! Just wanted to throw in a suggestion when it comes to the NamUs links on Solvepedia: you might want to use the namus.gov links to cases instead of namus.nij.ojp.gov ones. They are different platforms and the former is the “original”, accurate one. The latter gets hourly feeds from namus.gov, but it is prone to errors/glitches. I contact NamUs once or twice a year because it stops working properly or stops working altogether, sometimes for long periods of time. I don’t know the tech jargon, so I don’t know if I am able to properly explain the issue. I’ll paste part of a message I once got from NamUs, in case it helps understand the difference between the two:
“The public-facing pages of NamUs, located at https://namus.nij.ojp.gov, are supported by a Department of Justice Data Management, Reporting and Analytics system which receives hourly feeds from the NamUs transactional database. As a feeder system, the NamUs transactional database will always be more current than the system that supports public pages […].”

To exemplify, the first page I opened on Solvepedia and checked the sources links 3 times to a namus.nij.ojp.gov page that doesn’t exist. It should exist, as the case is still open on namus.gov, but in this case, for unknown reasons, it doesn’t work.

Waller County Jane Doe (1991)

Case: UP100484

solvepedia.org

https://namus.nij.ojp.gov/case/UP100484

The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs)

By bringing people, information, forensic science and technology together, NamUs helps resolve cases.

www.namus.gov

 

[SimsGuy67]

No humans. Fully autonomous.

Sorry, but IMO this isn't really something to brag about. You can talk about how AI is the future all you want, but when it comes to very detailed cases and such, is it really smart to trust AI when it can make even the simplest mistakes?

Like, imagine if someone goes onto the site looking for a possible match to one of their relatives, and finds a possibility, but they disregard it due to incorrect information the AI has put on the entry.

Not to mention it discredits the real work dozens of people truly committed to helping solve these cases have done. Especially in more sensitive cases, you have to be so careful not to come off as insensitive or spread misinformation, and that's even for humans. I doubt AI, in its current form, can do this.

With all due respect, I can't support this at all, and I think it could do more harm than good.

 

[othram]

Sorry, but IMO this isn't really something to brag about. You can talk about how AI is the future all you want, but when it comes to very detailed cases and such, is it really smart to trust AI when it can make even the simplest mistakes?

Like, imagine if someone goes onto the site looking for a possible match to one of their relatives, and finds a possibility, but they disregard it due to incorrect information the AI has put on the entry.

Not to mention it discredits the real work dozens of people truly committed to helping solve these cases have done. Especially in more sensitive cases, you have to be so careful not to come off as insensitive or spread misinformation, and that's even for humans. I doubt AI, in its current form, can do this.

With all due respect, I can't support this at all, and I think it could do more harm than good.

Really appreciate you taking the time to share this.

The goal here isn’t to replace human expertise or the incredibly important work that people have been doing for years. If anything, it’s the opposite. The idea is to support that work by surfacing connections, patterns, or leads that might otherwise be missed simply because of the magnitude or scale of the problem (too many unidentified and missing folks).

The reality is that we can’t realistically scale human effort to continuously compare every missing person case against every unidentified person case. There are just too many records, and more are added all the time. If we want to improve how often and how quickly these cases are resolved, we do need technology to help expand what’s possible.

So this is a research project to explore where technology can help. This is not unlike Google or Apple Maps. Both useful tools that were not so useful when they first launched

 

[othram]

RSBM

Hello! Just wanted to throw in a suggestion when it comes to the NamUs links on Solvepedia: you might want to use the namus.gov links to cases instead of namus.nij.ojp.gov ones. They are different platforms and the former is the “original”, accurate one. The latter gets hourly feeds from namus.gov, but it is prone to errors/glitches. I contact NamUs once or twice a year because it stops working properly or stops working altogether, sometimes for long periods of time. I don’t know the tech jargon, so I don’t know if I am able to properly explain the issue. I’ll paste part of a message I once got from NamUs, in case it helps understand the difference between the two:
“The public-facing pages of NamUs, located at https://namus.nij.ojp.gov, are supported by a Department of Justice Data Management, Reporting and Analytics system which receives hourly feeds from the NamUs transactional database. As a feeder system, the NamUs transactional database will always be more current than the system that supports public pages […].”

To exemplify, the first page I opened on Solvepedia and checked the sources links 3 times to a namus.nij.ojp.gov page that doesn’t exist. It should exist, as the case is still open on namus.gov, but in this case, for unknown reasons, it doesn’t work.

Waller County Jane Doe (1991)

Case: UP100484

solvepedia.org

https://namus.nij.ojp.gov/case/UP100484

The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs)

By bringing people, information, forensic science and technology together, NamUs helps resolve cases.

www.namus.gov

Good catch. Thank you for surfacing this!

 

[othram]

Nearly 50 years after his remains were discovered, the Blount County Sheriff’s Office, the University of Tennessee Forensic Anthropology Center, and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation never gave up, working together and using Othram technology to identify a 1981 John Doe as William Thomas Green.

After 44 Years, Blount County John Doe (1981) is Identified

 

[dotr]

Nearly 50 years after his remains were discovered, the Blount County Sheriff’s Office, the University of Tennessee Forensic Anthropology Center, and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation never gave up, working together and using Othram technology to identify a 1981 John Doe as William Thomas Green.

After 44 Years, Blount County John Doe (1981) is Identified

D

TN Thread 'TN-East Miller's Cove area of Blount County, Knoxville John Doe, #UP1591, 4 April, 1981, DNA-William Thomas Green, (born March 29, 1942), 2026.'

43 minutes ago

William Thomas Green

After 44 Years, Blount County John Doe (1981) is Identified

Blount County Sheriff's Office, University of Tennessee Forensic Anthropology Center, and Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Team with Othram to Identify a 1981 John Doe

dnasolves.com

''On April 4, 1981, a local hunter discovered the body of a man in the East Miller's Cove area of Blount County, Tennessee. Blount County is just south of Knoxville, Tennessee. Investigators responded to the scene and began collecting evidence and investigating. A forensic anthropology examination determined that the remains were those of a white man who was likely between the ages of 18 to 35 years old when he died, likely sometime between 1977 and 1980.

Investigators with...

• dotr

• 

 

[SimsGuy67]

Really appreciate you taking the time to share this.

The goal here isn’t to replace human expertise or the incredibly important work that people have been doing for years. If anything, it’s the opposite. The idea is to support that work by surfacing connections, patterns, or leads that might otherwise be missed simply because of the magnitude or scale of the problem (too many unidentified and missing folks).

The reality is that we can’t realistically scale human effort to continuously compare every missing person case against every unidentified person case. There are just too many records, and more are added all the time. If we want to improve how often and how quickly these cases are resolved, we do need technology to help expand what’s possible.

So this is a research project to explore where technology can help. This is not unlike Google or Apple Maps. Both useful tools that were not so useful when they first launched

Okay, but the thing is, this statement didn't really address my main concern, and that is that the AI may fabricate information, which, if anything, would bury real connections. When you apply the rate of how often AI gets stuff wrong, it could impede the investigation of hundreds of cases. Maybe thousands.