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Video Surveillance System That Reasons Like a Human

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the robotic-overlords dept.

An anonymous reader writes "BRS Labs has created a technology it calls Behavioral Analytics which uses cognitive reasoning, much like the human brain, to process visual data and to identify criminal and terroristic activities. Built on a framework of cognitive learning engines and computer vision, AISight, provides an automated and scalable surveillance solution that analyzes behavioral patterns, activities and scene content without the need for human training, setup, or programming."

18 of 143 comments (clear)

  1. Of course by sopssa · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Nothing can go wrong!

    1. Re:Of course by bugi · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The best of both worlds! Human stupidity plus the compassion of a machine.

  2. Proof? by FlyingBishop · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Source or it doesn't work.

    1. Re:Proof? by Jurily · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Mod parent up. Said AI first needs to distinguish between "activity" and "the wind blew a leaf across the screen". Then you need to distinguish between "lights a cigarette" and "lights the fuse on dynamite".

      So, if it already does all that, just one more question: how do you define "criminal and terrorist activities" programmatically when not even the law is clear? Even shooting people can be a non-criminal act.

    2. Re:Proof? by TheWingThing · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It must first differentiate between "time flies like an arrow" and "fruit flies like a banana". Then, and only then, can be the system be trusted.

    3. Re:Proof? by beav007 · · Score: 3, Funny
      What I want to know is: whose cognitive reasoning is it based on, exactly?

      Male?

      Ooh, low cut top! Zoom zoom zoom!
      Wait, the wind is picking up! Initiate scan for pleated skirts!

      Or female?

      Ooh, there's a sale over there! *zoom* Do they have my colour?
      Wait, that handbag's a knockoff! *Dials DHS*

  3. Bit more info - can it be as good as humans? by xmas2003 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A little more info from the BRS Labs website:
    "The system takes the input from existing video security cameras (no need to change equipment); recognizes and identifies the objects in each frame and passes that data to its Machine Learning Engine. There, the system 'learns' what activity is normal for each unique area viewed by each camera. It then stores these LEARNED memories, much the same way the human brain does, and refers back to them with any and all future activities observed by the camera. If any behavior falls outside of the norm, alerts are generated."

    Sounds impressive, but will the algorithms be sophisticated enough to watch grass grow and realize that it's normal behavior for the garbage truck to come by weekly ... but still send an alarm when a burgler steals your stuff!

    --
    Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
    1. Re:Bit more info - can it be as good as humans? by RightSaidFred99 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      My guess is it applies a few simple heuristics to analyze the behavior and the real trick is identifying the behavior.

      Example: In an alley behind a hotel people frequently walk out a door, put something in a container, and walk back in. This becomes "normal". Then someone goes out back and starts smoking. Whoops, wtf is this! Alert, alert. OK, so this gets flagged as OK a few times. The system decides it's OK. However, when two people hold a third at gunpoint and linger in an area of the alley not usually used for smoking, this would now trigger as abnormal.

      Another thing it might notice is the same person coming back to the front of a convenience store, waiting a minute, then leaving, then coming back again. Most people only walk in, walk out - this is abnormal.

      So it won't tell you someone is burglarizing you, but it might focus your attention on a camera where something could be happening. I'd assume it would get better over time as things were flagged "ok" or "not ok", but at best it would provide some simple pre-filtering to focus human attention on scenes that are slightly more likely to be "interesting".

    2. Re:Bit more info - can it be as good as humans? by droopycom · · Score: 5, Funny

      If it really think like a human, the main feature will be to automatically upload videos of people having sex in elevators on the web.

  4. I'll know it when I see it. by Jason+Pollock · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's a press release pretending to be journalism.

    If it doesn't need training, how does it define "terroristic activity"? Is it the "I'll know it when I see it" definition?

    The article seems to indicate it works like a Bayesian filter on the video - pointing out things that aren't typical for the camera.

    Much like any automated system that is supposed to filter out false positives, it is probably pretty easy to train either the operators or the system itself to throttle back the sensitivity to a point where it ignores everything.

  5. It Comforts Me To Know.... by BJ_Covert_Action · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...that somewhere else in the world, there is a young, badass mother fighting off robots from the future that were designed to look like my Governor in a heroic attempt to destroy this new technology along with her scrappy, but as-of-yet slightly immature son....

    At least, I think that's where we are in the time-line right?

    --
    Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
  6. It's a lie by blhack · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The "machine learning engine" is a "datacenter" (warehouse) full of cheap African laborers who are all watching the cameras.

    (this is a joke, it just isn't funny, and it is meant to illustrate a point. See the next line):
    God/nature/FSM/evolution/al gore/$deity has done a pretty damn good job at building our brains, why are we trying to reinvent that wheel in a computer?

     

    --
    NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
    1. Re:It's a lie by evanbd · · Score: 3, Funny

      The "machine learning engine" is a "datacenter" (warehouse) full of cheap African laborers who are all watching the cameras.

      (this is a joke, it just isn't funny, and it is meant to illustrate a point. See the next line): God/nature/FSM/evolution/al gore/$deity has done a pretty damn good job at building our brains, why are we trying to reinvent that wheel in a computer?

      Because the owners of those brains get all whiny when you try to stick them in jars and make them solve the problems you want to solve, rather than sitting around watching porn? Really, sticking a bunch of brains in a 19" rack is harder than you'd think.

  7. yes, but... by gandhi_2 · · Score: 3, Funny

    ...does it run racial profiling?

    --
    THL phish sticks
  8. Human Intelligence by Reason58 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What a great way to absolve any personal responsibility. Detained wrongfully? Not our fault, the machine said you were moving like a terrorist.

    1. Re:Human Intelligence by radtea · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Also, I wonder how well these systems will handle contextual clues that people pick up on automatically?

      "Contextual clues" like a dark-skinned guy in London rushing to catch the Tube wearing a ski jacket on a warmish day?

      Those are the kind of "contextual clues" that people use all the time to make lethal misjudgements, and in the case at hand resulted in a completely innocent Brazilian who was legally in Britain going legally about his legal business being murdered by police.

      Given how badly humans are known empirically to suck at making these kinds of judgments only an arrogant idiot would think of programming a machine to emulate us. But of course, arrogant idiots are incapable of adjusting their beliefs in response to empirical data, so they probably aren't even aware of how badly they suck at this.

      --
      Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
  9. False positve and False negative readings by mjensen · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Much like detecting terrorists by facial recognition, this is vaporware until they publish some numbers.

    I once had someone misplace a sales call to me, being proud his facial recognition system was 70% accurate. He had no idea how much his system is a pain in the ass when its wrong, and for the airport security business he was trying to get, 90% accuracy is considered terrible.

  10. Hopefully not like humans by D4C5CE · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Who, under video surveillance, tend to act rather irresponsibly:
    • Feeling safe(r) when and where they are not, because of the false promise of BB to be watching (over) them.
    • Mostly turning a blind eye on crime (and its victims), as the all-seeing eye of BB and/or "someone (else)" will surely take care of it.
    • Having learned from an early age to show only herd mentality out of preference falsification in their desperate attempts to try and please the watchmen and be seen to obey "like every other good citizen".
    • In the rare instances of courage, not fleeing insurmountable dangers out of the feeling that someone has got to be watching and will send backup any moment now.

    Interestingly in Europe after a series of dreadful incidents on live video, this is finally being debated on the eve of general elections: http://www.piratenpartei.de/node/920/29268#comment-29268 - as at the other end of the line, in a situation room (that may be on the next floor or station, and yet too) far away, officers will have to watch events unfold and wish in vain to finally be out there with a gun again (or have sufficient forces to dispatch), e.g. to stop that attacker they can only videotape and helplessly watch wreak havoc on screen.