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AI Mistakes Ad On a Bus For an Actual CEO, Then Publicly Shames Them For 'Jaywalking' (scmp.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the South China Morning Post:
Since last year, many Chinese cities have cracked down on jaywalking by investing in facial recognition systems and AI-powered surveillance cameras. Jaywalkers are identified and shamed by displaying their photographs on large public screens... Developments are also underway to engage the country's mobile network operators and social media platforms, such as Tencent Holdings' WeChat and Sina Weibo, to establish a system in which offenders will receive personal text messages as soon as they are caught violating traffic rules....
Making a compelling case for change is the recent experience of Dong Mingzhu, chairwoman of China's biggest maker of air conditioners Gree Electric Appliances, who found her face splashed on a huge screen erected along a street in the port city of Ningbo... That artificial intelligence-backed surveillance system, however, erred in capturing Dong's image on Wednesday from an advertisement on the side of a moving bus. The traffic police in Ningbo, a city in the eastern coastal province of Zhejiang, were quick to recognise the mistake, writing in a post on microblog Sina Weibo on Wednesday that it had deleted the snapshot. It also said the surveillance system would be completely upgraded to cut incidents of false recognition in future.
The article says the mistakenly-accused CEO's company later thanked the traffic police for their hard work, and "called on people to obey traffic rules to keep the streets safe."
"The Chinese government is currently working to combine the operations of more than 170 million public security cameras to strengthen its surveillance network's ability to track and monitor the country's 1.4 billion citizens. Research firm IHS Markit has estimated that the number of surveillance cameras in China could reach 450 million by 2020."
Making a compelling case for change is the recent experience of Dong Mingzhu, chairwoman of China's biggest maker of air conditioners Gree Electric Appliances, who found her face splashed on a huge screen erected along a street in the port city of Ningbo... That artificial intelligence-backed surveillance system, however, erred in capturing Dong's image on Wednesday from an advertisement on the side of a moving bus. The traffic police in Ningbo, a city in the eastern coastal province of Zhejiang, were quick to recognise the mistake, writing in a post on microblog Sina Weibo on Wednesday that it had deleted the snapshot. It also said the surveillance system would be completely upgraded to cut incidents of false recognition in future.
The article says the mistakenly-accused CEO's company later thanked the traffic police for their hard work, and "called on people to obey traffic rules to keep the streets safe."
"The Chinese government is currently working to combine the operations of more than 170 million public security cameras to strengthen its surveillance network's ability to track and monitor the country's 1.4 billion citizens. Research firm IHS Markit has estimated that the number of surveillance cameras in China could reach 450 million by 2020."
I think it was intended as a joke. Really, though, Shanghai drivers follow rules of the road pretty well, if not as well as in the US. Certainly better than many other East Asian nations (not a high standard, but still).
In Europe we simply call it crossing the road, there's not even a word for it in the languages I know. Why do americans and chinese criminalise jaywalking ? WTF do they think is wrong with simply crossing a road when no cars are present ? I don't get it.
Germany, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Serbia and Slovakia has rules against jaywalking too. But at least in Germany the fine is really symbolic, like 5-10 euro where the cop has to watch you cross and be annoyed enough about it to fine you. It's a cultural thing about rules, you wouldn't ignore a red light in a car because the coast is clear so why is the red man different? If it's there, use it. If it's there, wait for your turn. Don't set a bad example for the kids scurrying across the street at the smallest gap in traffic. It's also not so symbolic when it comes to division of fault and whether something was just an accident or reckless driving, that you were jaywalking counts against you even though the driver has a general obligation - a green light is not a license to ram. Though I prefer our system where we focus on saying it's allowed and focus on making everyone cross safely instead. But both systems works quite well.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Watch this short Youtube video of Adam ruins Everything. TL,DW: car manufactures made up "jaywalking" to clear the streets in the US of pedestrians and remove liability.
At least in China they aren't using drones to hunt down "criminal street users" yet. YET.