The Defense Advanced Research Projects Analysis (DARPA) program is developing a visual intelligence capability with cameras that analyze patterns, movement and speech and record and relay that information. The program called Mind’s Eye aims to take the analytical power of human ground surveillance into unmanned systems to take troops out of harm’s way.
From the DARPA press release:
“Humans perform a wide range of visual tasks with ease, something no current artificial intelligence can do in a robust way. They have inherently strong spatial judgment and are able to learn new spatiotemporal concepts directly from the visual experience. Humans visualize scenes and objects, as well as the actions involving those objects and possess a powerful ability to manipulate those imagined scenes mentally to solve problems. A machine-based implementation of such abilities is broadly applicable to a wide range of applications, including ground surveillance.”
Researchers at Colorado State University are among those teams working on the project, and researcher Don Draper appeared today on the local radio program called Colorado Matters. In the interview, he related the scenario of such video surveillance for civilian applications where cameras pick out patterns in public spaces such as someone clutching their chest to alert about potential heart attacks, or picking up patterns of violent behavior. He qualified the use of technology in places where we have the expectation of being out in public, and that the systems enhance surveillance that is already expected in such places.
It’s interesting to think about where these technologies are headed with this spatiotemporal analysis taking place in machines rather than via individuals. There’s the expectation that machines will provide a more objective view of the goings on, and that this insight and alerting will be without prejudice for a safer environment for all. Does this sort of visual intelligence system takes out the centralized Big Brother feeling from the idea of a surveillant society?
