Human rights vs protection from criminals/terrorists is a delicate balance. I am curious what are the human rights that get violated by having cameras that identify illegal activities.
The balance is between state power and civil liberties. State power is important to curtail crime and maintain order, civil liberties are an important check in preventing a state from becoming oppressive or pursuing a very unpopular course of action.
There is very little understanding in the UK, and in England in particular, that it is dangerous to allow a state to become too powerful, for its police force to be so effective that it precludes the possibility of the public removing a government that is not serving its people.
In general, AI connected to the cameras can be made to do both. This one seems to just do people. Once the system is in place, expansion of use is much easier.
>> Have you never had a speeding ticket from an automatic camera?
I don't drive, so no :)
More to the point, figuring out the speed of a moving object is not an AI task- and I don't mean that in the sense of "if it works it's not AI". I mean, really, it's not something AI was ever interested in, presumably because it's not a particularly complicated calculation, given the right equipment.
Generally, AI is interested in problems that demand, how can I put it, unorthodox solutions. Or just very tricky ones.
So the kind of thing I thought you meant was identifying, say, burglars or muggers, from video feeds etc. That sort of thing is not possible yet, certainly not outside controlled conditions ("in the lab").
> More to the point, figuring out the speed of a moving object is not an AI task- and I don't mean that in the sense of "if it works it's not AI".
Reading the number plate, on the other hand…
I would be surprised if the AI in any worthwhile self driving car couldn’t detect 90% of categories of unlawful road use.
Detecting assaults may be computationlly unreasonable at this point, but there is work on generating 3D meshes which map to all human bodies in a scene, so it’s not unreasonable to draw a line from one to the other. Identifying that a theft has occurred, however, probably can’t be done yet outside carefully controlled conditions. Yet.
(I have been given one speeding ticket, but in error because I had sold the car before the incident).
There is very little understanding in the UK, and in England in particular, that it is dangerous to allow a state to become too powerful, for its police force to be so effective that it precludes the possibility of the public removing a government that is not serving its people.