Software Describes Surveillance Footage In AI-Generated Text

holy_calamity writes "A computer vision research group at UCLA has put together a system that watches surveillance footage and generates a text description of the events in real time. It only works on traffic cameras for now but demonstrates how sophisticated computer vision is becoming. Interestingly, the system was built thanks to a database of millions of human-labeled images put together by Chinese workers."

Comments

Expectation of privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

There needs to be an expectation of privacy regarding recordings of people in public places. There is a huge difference between being seen vs. having one's every public move recorded, indexed and archived.

Re:Expectation of privacy

[MyLongNickName]

Good luck with that. So, if I am in public I should expect that anything I do not be recorded, talked about or written about? I do not know how you expect to enforce that.

Re:Expectation of privacy

[IndustrialComplex]

Good luck with that. So, if I am in public I should expect that anything I do not be recorded, talked about or written about? I do not know how you expect to enforce that.

You should have some expectation of privacy because we need to have SOME privacy in order to function as human beings. Generally the expectation goes back to what you would feel comfortable with if it were performed by a physical person. And I'm certain that if it were somehow possible to assign a person to follow and document every move, and action for every person in the US we might have a slight problem with that.

We run into a hell of a lot of trouble when we allow our standard definition of privacy which involved 1800s methods to be applied to our current level of technology.

The basic problem is this:

As technology improves, our expectation for privacy decreases. So using expectation of privacy as the measure for what should or should not be private is a HORRIBLE practice. It essentially means that as a technology or practice becomes ubiquitous, it becomes acceptable.

Since we have no means to resist an application of technology*, I urge everyone to dump this 'yardstick'.

*In practice, you do not get to opt-in or opt-out of having a privacy invading practice applied to you. It IS applied, and then you have the option to petition against it's application. Often, you don't even know that your privacy is being violated for years. As a result, these practices become common before the first complaint can even reasonably be raised. Even then, this ignores the issue of having previous complaints dismissed by judges who are ignorant in the field of the technology being discussed.

Re:Expectation of privacy

[Hognoxious]

There needs to be an expectation of privacy regarding recordings of people in public places.

Given that "privacy" is derived from "private", which is an antonym of "public", I'd say there needs to be an expectation that you should buy a dictionary.

Re:Expectation of privacy

[drsmithy]

There needs to be an expectation of privacy regarding recordings of people in public places. There is a huge difference between being seen vs. having one's every public move recorded, indexed and archived.

The word you're after here is anonymity, not privacy.

Re:Scary

[adonoman]

It a whole lot more objective than leaving it up to police officers. If it weren't for the obvious privacy issues in whoever's running this knowing where my car has been, I'd be happy if every intersection had this sort of thing. Traffic flow would be improved immensely. Of course the privacy thing really is a deal breaker when it comes to this level of surveillance (I'd trust the AI, but unfortunately, these sort of systems always have a human in the mix).

I'd much prefer that we'd all switch to AI controlled cars.

Re:Scary

[0123456]

It a whole lot more objective than leaving it up to police officers.

If every law was 'objectively' enforced 24/7, life would be unbearable and most of us would be in jail; the end result would be social collapse or civil war.

Hilarious possibilities

[e2d2]

This has huge potential to not only push computer vision forward, but also humor.

Example text:

"I see that one old man hobbling down the street, I think he may be off his meds. Uh oh, he's looking _crazier_ than usual!"

"Some asshat just drove completely through a red light. I don't even think she saw the thing! License plate #45AhfD... Is Mrs Doris Johnson-Johnson.. seriously? Who hyphenates the same name!? Seriously I can't comprehend that. But I digress. Her address is .."

The possibilities are endless.

Re:Scary

[mystik]

What's broken then?

The Laws?

Or the Enforcement?

Moral Statute Machine

[rminsk]

Booth: Gun. Noun. Portable firearm. This device was widely utilized in the urban wars of the late twentieth century. Referred to as a pistol, a piece...
Simon Phoenix: Look I don't need a history lesson! C'mon, HAL, where are the god damn guns?
Moral Statute Machine: You are fined one credit for a violation of the Verbal Morality Statute.
Simon Phoenix: What? F*** you!
Moral Statute Machine: Your repeated violation of the Verbal Morality Statute has caused me to notify the San Angeles Police Department. Please remain where you are for your reprimand.
Simon Phoenix: Yeah, right.
[police sirens approach]
Simon Phoenix: F***ers are fast too.
Moral Statute Machine: You are fined one credit for a violation of the Verbal Morality Statute.

expect this then...

[JustNiz]

>> the system was built thanks to a database of millions of human-labeled images put together by Chinese workers

Happy car clash into barrier of non-moving.

Re:Scary

[ElectricTurtle]

Yeah, too bad that's a gross generalization that doesn't correlate with reality. Besides the fact that the concept of wealth inequality as moral negative is nonsense, it doesn't take too much analysis to see that while the US and Mexico may have similar ratios of rich to poor (which by itself is misleading, as 10^4:10^3 is the same ratio as 10^2:10, but the magnitude is different, so the case really is that the poor in the US are richer than the poor in Mexico, and the rich in Mexico are poorer than the rich in the US. The ratio ultimately is the same, but the magnitude is different, which is expressed in the difference in the quality of life), crime in Mexico is worse. Similarly, in 'more equal' countries according to your favored methodology like Columbia, Nigeria, etc. crime and quality of life is worse than in 'less equal' places such as Hong Kong. Your theory simply does not correlate to reality, but I doubt this will stop you.

Source code

[metamatic]

10 PRINT "A car just went past."
20 GOTO 10