Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Can AI be Trusted with Surveillance Tasks?

China's war on jaywalking went to the next level last spring when AI-based facial recognition systems were integrated into some crosswalks, to punish jaywalkers by squirting them with water, sending them texts warning them about legal consequences of jaywalking, and/or publicly shaming them by displaying their pictures and names on large digital billboards.

Last week, this system entered a new and exciting failure mode when a traffic-cam in the port city of Ningbo captured a face displayed on the side of a passing bus, correctly identified it as belonging to Dong Mingzhu, CEO of Chinese AC giant Gree Electric Appliances, and then plastered Ms Dong's face all over a giant billboard, falsely accusing her of jaywalking. more