Facial Recognition Could Be Coming To Police Body Cameras (defenseone.com)

schwit1 quotes a report from Defense One: Even if the cop who pulls you over doesn't recognize you, the body camera on his chest eventually just might. Device-maker Motorola will work with artificial intelligence software startup Neurala to build "real-time learning for a person of interest search" on products such as the Si500 body camera for police, the firm announced Monday. Italian-born neuroscientist and Neurala founder Massimiliano Versace has created patent-pending image recognition and machine learning technology. It's similar to other machine learning methods but far more scalable, so a device carried by that cop on his shoulder can learn to recognize shapes and -- potentially faces -- as quickly and reliably as a much larger and more powerful computer. It works by mimicking the mammalian brain, rather than the way computers have worked traditionally.

Versace's research was funded, in part, by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA under a program called SyNAPSE. In a 2010 paper for IEEE Spectrum, he describes the breakthrough. Basically, a tiny constellation of processors do the work of different parts of the brain -- which is sometimes called neuromorphic computation -- or "computation that can be divided up between hardware that processes like the body of a neuron and hardware that processes the way dendrites and axons do." Versace's research shows that AIs can learn in that environment using a lot less code.

Comments

Cool

[cerberusss]

I can already picture the scene. We're getting some sort of hybrid human/cam cop. The body cam will give constant instructions.

Cop at side of road: *holds up his hand*
You: *brake, roll down window*
You: "Uh hi officer"
Cop: "Hi, nothing to worry about, but I just wanted to tell you that your left brake lig"
Body cam: "SUSPECT RECOGNIZED"
Cop: *covers body cam* "Sorry, sometimes it malfunctions"
Body cam in muffled voice: "SUSPECT NAME C. R. IMINAL, HIGHLY DANGEROUS SHOOT ON SIGHT, CERTAINTY INTERVAL AT LEAST 83 PERCENT"
Cop: "Sir, please step out of the car" *unholsters*
You: "I'm just on my way to pick up the kid from daycare"
Body cam: "KILL KILL KILL"

Re:Cool

[Enigma2175]

Maybe he dosent want to kill innocent bystanders or steal thier money with asset forfeiture.

With Sessions at the helm, asset forfeiture is going to get even worse. Sessions said "we plan to develop policies to increase forfeitures". If you think the american public is being robbed now, you ain't seen nothin' yet.

Re:No it won't

[BarbaraHudson]

How about a body cam with no off switch? Or a drone to follow them around all day and catch everything, because these killings happen in public? Or just post a bounty for the first camera to capture a police shooting? That should have a bit of a deterrent value.

Either that, or everyone is going to have to start wearing body cams.

Re: No it won't

[Oswald McWeany]

Want to reduce the number of killings? Rein in the cops. They kill more than 4x the number of civilians than total police killed by civilians..

Of course police kill more civilians than the other way around! I know you're using that as a statistic to suggest the police are all corrupt, but even with 0% corruption where all the killings were bad guys trying to hurt good people, you'd still have more cops killing civilians than the other way around. They're organized, they outnumber the bad guys, they're better equipped and better trained.

I'm not saying there isn't police corruption. Any time you have power, you invite corruption. Obviously there is a problem with police corruption. Obviously, innocent people get killed by police each year. And certainly lethal force is used even when it needn't be in some cases. The vast majority of those killed aren't lily-white innocent.

Not saying we shouldn't avoid deaths, I think better training needs to be given the police to give alternatives to lethal force and every death should be investigated by an independent body; but if it's the choice between a cop (who 95% are decent people doing a job to protect us) and an armed robber- I'd rather the cop survive. (I'd rather they both survive, but if two people have guns out that's rarely going to happen).

As long as criminals have guns in this country, police officers will have guns too. There will be deaths. I certainly hope that those who (majority are decent guys) survive more often.