Researchers Develop Surveillance System That Can Watch & Predict 106
hypnosec writes "Carnegie Mellon university researchers have developed a surveillance system that can not only recognize human activities but can also predict what might happen next. Scientists, through the Army-funded research dubbed Mind's Eye, have created intelligent software that recognizes human activities in video and can predict what might just happen next; sounding an alarm if it detects anomalous behavior. "
Next up.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Next up.... (Score:4, Insightful)
This system will be hilariously judging when someone with ataxia or just a plain limp sounds the system every damn time he walks past. Or some poor person with social anxiety that is constantly harrassed until he refuses to go out anymore.
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"It's the cops. Just stay calm, and act normal."
Soon, Americans will treat the boys in blue, just like they did the red coats.
Re:Next up.... (Score:5, Insightful)
You're Eight Times More Likely to be Killed by a Police Officer than a Terrorist
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/youre-eight-times-more-likely-to-be-killed-by-a-police-officer-than-a-terrorist/print/ [cato-at-liberty.org]
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What percentage of our population is out preying on others, which will invoke the need of a policeman to straighten it out? Its been my observation that the "perp" is the first to use violent force in an effort to escape. The only way for a policeman to do his job is to counter with whatever force is required to do his job or protect himself. Sometimes this escalates to loss of life.
I'd still rather err on the side of law and order, as the poli
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How is this "accounting for his actions" supposed to work again?
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Re:Next up.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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This system was developed by the military, not by businesses ... that should give at least some clue as to who is developing this and what their initial intentions probably are, for whatever that's worth .. from the paper:
This research was sponsored by the Army Research Laboratory
and was accomplished under Cooperative Agreement
Number W911NF-10-2-0061. The views and conclusions contained
in this document are those of the authors and should
not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either
expres
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Can researchers just stop creating applications and systems that enable further surveillance and control of our society?
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Once again, science fiction becomes science fact.
that's a taserin' (Score:1)
get ready to be tasered on a false positive
Too late (Score:2)
Step out of the vehicle. Or I will tase you! [whptv.com]
It's already a too common occurrence..
Uh oh (Score:3)
Subject 1: "You, citizen. Pick up that can."
Subject 2: "..."
Camera: "Oh shi-"
Precrime (Score:1)
You're under arrest.
What for?
For pre-crime.
I'm not committing any crime!
You can tell that to the court.
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Re:Profiling? (Score:4, Interesting)
Unless you assert that racial profiling would be wrong regardless of whether it works, in which case you have abandoned science and went over to the territory of ideology.
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Because it doesn't really matter if it works or not. Nobody here, I hope, seriously believes that the behavior of individuals can be accurately predicted all the time. What's going to matter is if they SAY it works and people believe them. Then all kinds of bad things start happening.
"Such as?", you say? Such as using this or any other snake oil tech as a "probable cause" for searches, detaining people, etc. Such as using it as an excuse to break up protests against officials because the protests will
"Works" (Score:2)
On the other hand, this system will be great at finding people who are not accepting their position in the world, and who might rally others in that position to stand up for themselves. Rather than enforcing laws, what this system will do is enforce the social order -- criminals will learn to disguise their behaviors, but people who
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Unless you assert that racial profiling would be wrong regardless of whether it works
It does work, and it is wrong. Blacks are more likely to commit a violent crime than a white person. That is a fact. So what? They still have a right to be treated as individuals and to have equal rights before the law. In the list of priorities of a free society, "efficient law enforcement" does not come before "equal justice for all".
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I certainly agree with your assertion of equality, but I will correct you by saying, "more likely to be arrested and convicted of a crime."
A better question is why are certain races more likely to end up in jail?
That is a big distinction. Plenty of white people commit crimes every day and see leniency from police, judges and juries that blacks in similar circumstances do not. Look at police recommendation for charges as well as sentencing for evidence. Furthermore, black people are more likely to be living
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I certainly agree with your assertion of equality, but I will correct you by saying, "more likely to be arrested and convicted of a crime."
Good Liberal. You get a cookie! [Pats head]
Black people are more likely to commit violent crime than whites, and not even by a small margin ... the difference is massive that it must take some serious cognitive dissonance to maintain views like yours.
downvoted for disagreeing (Score:1)
downvoted my reply below for disagreeing? (Score:1)
Re:Profiling? (Score:4, Interesting)
poverty is obviously associated with higher crime rates.
The world has some very poor societies that are relatively crime free. The correlation between crime and poverty is complicated, and is certainly not "obvious".
If white people were the "subdominant race" in America, we would see the same trends in reverse.
You mean like in Haiti? Or Nigeria?
If your assertion that white dominance causes black crime was really true, then black crime would be higher in areas where they are a smaller minority, and diminish as they became more dominant. That is the exact opposite of what actually happens. I live in San Jose, California, and our black population is about 3%. We have one of the lowest crime rates of any big city in America, and blacks in particular are less likely to commit crimes. If you look at black majority cities, like East St Louis [wikipedia.org], Illinois (95% black) it has one of the highest rates of crime (nearly all black-on-black). I don't see how you can blame that on "white dominance".
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Oh I see. Racism is over, doesn't exist anymore now that Obama was elected, right? Or you don't see racism yourself, whatever colour you are, so it must not exist. I misjudged you when you took a position against racial profiling, so I'm sorry.
So then your theory is that black people are genetically predisposed to crime? Or what? Perhaps you can explain why black people make up a majority of the prison population in the US? Enlighten us.
The world has some very poor societies that are relatively crime free. The correlation between crime and poverty is complicated, and is certainly not "obvious".
Fine. It's not obvious to you. But counter-examples of a trend do not n
Will it be as intelligent as Siri? (Score:5, Funny)
I said "The corner of VINE" not "PINE," you dumb bitch!
"Hey, would you like a free iPhone?" (Score:1)
Reverse the polarity, and crime turns into good deeds.
Person of Interest (Score:1)
this is the focus of Person of Interest
Anomalous Behavior (Score:4, Insightful)
This is for the drones, right? (Score:1)
Better watch out [f-secure.com]
Pure BS! (Score:4, Informative)
To use the words, "might just happen next", is just code for "might not happen next".
In short, it's just a loophole for scientists to get more funding, while emphasizing that their software does exactly what they said it would do.
We have better thing to do or worry about, right?
Here we go. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Precisely. Why are they creating a societal cage?
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When are ordinary, yet intelligent people going to refuse to live in and contribute to such a state ?
Never, because:
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Those would be: a) the not intelligent people, or b) those that decided to NOT give a fuck and just enjoy it while they can. Either way you're right. Sadly. Anybody up for some half-life 2 style action? We just need to convince the government of naming the police "combine" and then get a Gordon Freeman.
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In my native Europe as much as in your great & free US: More surveillance state. More police state. More security craze. Where is this going to stop ? When are ordinary, yet intelligent people going to refuse to live in and contribute to such a state ?
When an outside force interrupts the process. Every police state fell not because of internal pressures, but because something external to it caused a slight shift which then energized the population into revolt.
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That's a rather bold statement. Throughout history revolutions were triggered both from the outside and inside, often a combination of both, sometimes just one of them. Often they dissolve when the dictator dies. The Franco and Salazar regimes in Europe are perfect examples. Luckily it seems that extremely despotic systems based on terror don't last long, see e.g. Cambodia during the Khmer regime or the 3rd Reich. Less oppressive regimes seem to take longer, about 2-3 generations, until they disintegrate. I
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"When are ordinary, yet intelligent people going to refuse to live in and contribute to such a state ?"
When the leading food-related health problem becomes starvation, not obesity. Fat, warm (cool in summer), entertained, people do not rebel.
If the British had Big Macs and X-Boxes back in 1776, we'd still be talking English now.
PS: For those who are going to think you're oh-so-very-clever and point out "Duh, we are talking English now, dummy!", the sentence above was an attempt at "humor". A common form of
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More surveillance state. More police state. More security craze. Where is this going to stop ?
When a typical person has power, one of their greatest fears is losing that power. In other words, this will -never- stop. It will only get worse. Eventually, technology will get to the point where one person can have power over every other person.
Once there is only one person who can have power over all others, that person will realize how lonely the world is (but maybe not why). At that point, it will be suicide for the entire human race. End of Game.
It's vaporware (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they haven't "developed a surveillance system". The paper is two psychologists blithering about the potential architecture of one. It reminds me of the awful papers that came from the "expert systems" community in the 1980s. There's been some progress; it mentions Bayesian statistics. But it's fundamentally an approach based on parsing visual data into something that looks like predicate calculus and grinding on that. There's a long history of that not working.
It's an idea in the right direction, though. A key component of intelligence is prediction. Knowing what is likely to happen is a basic component of common sense, an area in which AI systems have historically been weak. With prediction comes the ability to ask "what if" questions, essential to deciding what to do next without doing something stupid.
There's been real progress in that area, but not from the expert systems people. Adobe Photoshop's content-aware fill [photoshopessentials.com] is an example of a successful system which has a form of "common sense" - it fills in plausible-looking areas to replace sections deleted from photos. Related technologies exist for videos, and are used for motion compression and 2D to fake 3D conversion. Systems which look at video and guess "what happens next" may be the next step.
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True in a sense. Machine prediction and precognition is long way away, as it depends on more inputs and sensors than just camera lens.
It all just seems as one of those "throw the cammo over it - DARPA ppl. are coming to visit and we do need some healthy cash" projects.
More interesting was some recent science program that is focused on the thought creation and generation that had one confirmed result - we form our strings of thoughts in certain regions of our brains and make decisions - 6 seconds before we b
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I've read the article and the paper and I can't see anything to indicate it's vaporware ... by all accounts there appears to be a working basic system.
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Read it again, carefully. The key word to note is "proposal". Even the components that have been "implemented", like SCONE are still, yes, vaporware. "Coming soon" since 2003, last updated 2010.
This is "Wouldn't it be super awesome if someone could implement all our graphs and diagrams and actually make it work in the real world? Therefore, more funding."
fairly predicatable (Score:5, Insightful)
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The freedom to act must include the freedom to fuck up. (Though it does not imply immunity from consequences.)
So it depends highly on just what consequences you're proposing to attach to "detected pre-crime". If all you do is to "just happen" to appear on the scene, and in case of private property ask people to leave, then you can.
If you are proposing to impose sanctions on not-yet-commited "crimes", or even "merely" build tracking databases, then
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If the system has a high confidence in suspicious behavior, what reasons would be there to wait for the crime to happen?
What about the man who decides to kill his wife's lover, but at the last minute cannot go through with it. He would no doubt fill the criteria of a 'futhure' guilty person although in the end, he would have done nothing.
I know about that.. (Score:1)
Hah! Finally! (Score:4, Funny)
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A camera that can tell me if I'm about to be asked "Do I look fat in this dress?"
Not really an innovation; It doesn't take an intelligent camera to know what comes next. Specifically, it doesn't matter which way you answer, you're still not getting laid tonight. Now, a camera that can text you before your significant other even asks if you want to go shopping with her and provide a list of socially-acceptable excuses would be an innovation. It would also break several laws of physics, notably that timey whimey wibbly wobbley...
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Not really an innovation; It doesn't take an intelligent camera to know what comes next.
Oh, I know that there is no safe way to answer it. But if said camera can warn me that the question is about to be asked, I can evade the situation entirely. That might offer me the opportunity to again develop/cultivate a worthwhile "significant other".
As it stands, I've found that my penchant for honesty is entirely too intrusive.
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Can't wait for the consumer version. (Score:2)
I'll wear out that fast-forward button getting to the shower scene.
By mandate of state of Pennsylvania (Score:1)
Neither Effective Nor Desirable (Score:2)
Needs mass spook-spamming (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm thinking along the lines of the emacs "spook" function, amongst other things. You just need enough a large enough group of participants working together.
The system can be trained in weird ways. For instance, if enough people in enough places scratch their noses with their left hands, then break out in a mock fight, the system will learn to sound the alarm every time someone scratches their nose with their left hand.
Or, for something more socially useful - have people pull out a cellphone, talk for a few seconds, then pull out a mock gun and pretend to mug others. Then, the system will freak out every time some annoying jerk pulls out a cellphone in public. Along that same theme, train the system to send in the troops whenever someone adjusts their underwear in public, or picks their nose, or farts loudly...
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... or farts loudly...
If the camera can *see* a fart, maybe it should call in the troops - for a rescue mission!
Future Crime (Score:2)
Future crime and skynet merge...
Let's play Global Thermonuclear War. (Score:2)
Just don't hook it to the launch system.
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Bogus Research...FTA (Score:5, Informative)
I looked through the full text of the research (http://stids.c4i.gmu.edu/papers/STIDSPapers/STIDS2012_T02_OltramariLebiere_CognitiveGroundedSystem.pdf)
It is bogus. Wouldn't get published. They say the system *predicts behavior* using a systematic behavior ontology. When it describes their theory of the ontology it lists three factors in the system.
"Causal Selectivity" #3 is the one that links **cause and effect** its the part of the equation where your action (reaching in pocket) is either interpreted as something threatening (trigger bomb) or non-threatening (scratch balls discretely in public).
Guess what...all they do is say "Will be addressed in further research"...!!!
The whole basis for their claim...'prediction' is explicitly not part of this research. They do not even address the link of one behavior to another, yet it is the whole premise of their claim!
From page two (emphasis added)
it's your tone (Score:2)
I will add the following:
While their backscattering my social network facial recognition identity index in 'real time' they might as well just scan my brain waves [wikipedia.org] with real time fMRI [wikipedia.org] and hell maybe throw in a kindly microwave auditory effect reminder [wikipedia.org] if'n it looks like i'm going to get ornery ;)
Seriously? (Score:1)
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Trouble in River City (Score:2)
I wonder how long it will take the system to stop flagging dancing as suspicious behavior?
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Or jumping jacks. That's been used as justification to bomb suspected terrorists.
anyone can predict... (Score:3)
Anyone can predict. Let me know when it can see the future.
Imagine if it was actually accurate sometimes (Score:2)
Scary ass article until,,. (Score:3)
You scan the PDF's and find it's for what path (walking) a person would take.