Facebook artificial intelligence chief developed SURVEILLANCE systems
SOCIAL INTELLIGENCE Facebook artificial intelligence
chief developed SURVEILLANCE systems
Social media tech guru helped to devise techniques which
could allow computers to spy on humans more effectively
BY JASPER HAMILL
29th September 2016, 12:25 pm
Facebook’s artificial intelligence chief worked on the
development of systems which could one day help computers automatically spy on
humans, The Sun Online has learned.
Yann LeCun, leader of Mark Zuckerberg’s AI research
division, contributed to academic papers exploring the creation of software
which would serve as a “key component” in an automated surveillance network.
CCTV cameras could soon be able to work out who and what
they are looking at, enabling the creation of a terrifyingly Orwellian
surveillance network
Computer surveillance is likely to become hugely
controversial in the coming years, as it will allow cops, spooks and even
private companies to track individual people’s movements.
Eventually, CCTV cameras will be able to work out the
identity of the people they are looking at – as long as they have pictures of
them.
Facebook, of course, has a huge number of images uploaded
by users and already uses facial recognition to automatically sort photos based
on who’s in them and where they were taken.
LeCun, the Facebook tech guru, was one of four authors of
a study aimed at teaching computers how to identify people as they walked down
a street, a technique known as pedestrian detection.
This technique is useful in surveillance and security
because it allows computers to quickly analyse CCTV footage and work out if it
can see a human or not.
“Pedestrian detection is a key problem for surveillance,”
the team wrote.
“The wide variety of appearances of pedestrians due to
body pose, clothing, lighting and backgrounds makes this task challenging.”
An image from the facial recognition study, showing how
computer can ‘see’ faces
LeCun also worked on a study exploring facial
recognition, an area of technology focused on allowing computers to detect
people’s face. Sophisticated version of this tech can reliably work out
someone’s identity.
In the paper, LeCun and his team wrote: “The detection of
human faces in natural images and videos is a key component in a wide variety
of applications of human-computer interaction… security, and surveillance.”
One day, it appears likely that CCTV cameras will use
refined versions of both pedestrian detection and facial recognition.
This would make the cameras useful for stopping crimes
such as shoplifting, but raises serious privacy concerns.
A Russian computer expert has already shown the
terrifying implications of modern surveillance technology by tracking down
women he spotted on the street using just one photograph.
Alexander Kabakov, 29, devised a system called FindFace
which lets users take a photo of someone and then work out their identity with
70% accuracy.
He said: “If you see someone you like, you can photograph
them, find their identity, and then send them a friend request.”
“In today’s world we are surrounded by gadgets. Our
phones, televisions, fridges, everything around us is sending real-time
information about us. Already we have full data on people’s movements, their
interests and so on.
“A person should understand that in the modern world he
is under the spotlight of technology. You just have to live with that.”
We have contacted Facebook for comment and it is looking
into our query.
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