Mini Briefs

This Small Company Is Turning Utah Into a Surveillance Panopticon

Banjo, a startup based in Utah, has set its ambitions on using machine learning and real-time data to help police solve crimes and tackle the opiod crises. Last year, the company struck a deal with the state of Utah that allowed it direct to access the state’s “thousands of traffice cameras” and “911 systems.”

To counter the obvious privacy concerns with its data access, Banjo often touts its patented privacy-preserving machine learning technology that can, among other things, “find crime without identifying criminals.” However, no details about how this is exactly accomplished has been released, and there is the serious question of whether the benefits of predictive policing outweigh its costs:

What is unclear is how many lives Banjo has saved, if it has saved any, and whether it’s even possible to create a product that automatically detects crime without creating a creeping surveillance state that inherently infringes on people’s rights and invades their privacy.

Advances & Business

• How Facebook uses machine learning to detect fake accounts - Fraudsters use fake accounts to spread spam, phishing links, or malware. Now Facebook is revealing details on how it uses AI to fight back.

• YouTube has nearly halved the number of conspiracy theory videos it recommends - The news: YouTube has managed to drastically reduce the number of conspiracy theory videos it recommends, but the total is creeping back up again, according to a new study.

• This Is The Year Of AI Regulations - The world of artificial intelligence is constantly evolving, and certainly so is the legal and regulatory environment in which it exists.

• How TensorFlow AI is helping preserve Japanese culture - Old scripts become extinct when they’re no longer known or read, like the ancient Japanese script Kuzushiji. Literary scholar Tarin Clanuwat is part of a small number of people who can understand the near-extinct script.

• There’s No Story That Stays Stable for Too Long.’ How Artists Are Using Artificial Intelligence to Confront Modern Anxieties - New technologies get blamed for much of today’s collective unease, but for Cheng, that same technology may also provide one of the best ways to come to terms with the times we live in.

• To self-drive in the snow, look under the road - Weather’s a problem for autonomous cars. MIT’s new system shows promise by using “ground-penetrating radar” instead of cameras or lasers.

• Boston Dynamics’ Handle Teams Up With Mobile Robots on Warehouse Logistics - Boston Dynamics and OTTO Motors partner to show how a heterogeneous robot team can be faster and more efficient

• An implant uses machine learning to give amputees control over prosthetic hands - Researchers managed to amplify nerve signals to the point where they can be translated into movements.

• Unleashing the power of AI for education - Educators today are in agreement: They need an AI strategy. But many institutions don’t know how to implement one - or where to start.

Concerns & Hype

• AI In Policing: Better Than A Knife Through The Chest? - The UK police are rolling out AI crime fighting with little regard to the societal risks. In an impassioned speech about police use of AI, the commissioner of the Metropolitan police, Cressida Dick, criticised privacy advocates.

• Before Clearview Became a Police Tool, It Was a Secret Plaything of the Rich - Investors and clients of the facial recognition start-up freely used the app on dates and at parties - and to spy on the public.

• Apple Just Disabled Clearview AI’s iPhone App For Breaking Its Rules On Distribution - A BuzzFeed News analysis of Clearview AI’s app for Apple’s mobile operating system found that the company had been violating the iPhone maker’s rules to distribute its apps to law enforcement agencies and other customers.

• The U.S. Fears Live Facial Recognition. In Buenos Aires, it’s a Fact of Life - Live facial recognition has been in use in the capital of Argentina for nearly a year.

Expert Opinions & Discussion within the field

• Time to rethink the publication process in machine learning - Yoshua Bengio comments on how to reform machine learning publications.

• AI Innovators Should Be Listening to Kids - From Greta Thunberg’s student-led climate strikes to the youth-driven protests in Hong Kong and Chile, the next generation is increasingly demanding a voice on pressing issues.

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