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Welcome to the Matrix …

… and the law enforcement of “pre-crime” as fictionalized in the flick Minority Report.  Are we all under surveillance in the “matrix?”  

Image1The US army is developing methods to covertly identify and track people who plan to do ‘something bad’. Hidden sensors will be used to detect AI’s version of ‘adversarial intent’ by reading and cataloguing our emotions and health.

A report called ‘Remote Detection of Covert Tactical Adversarial Intent of Individuals in Asymmetric Operations’ (PDF) was authored by the US Army Research Laboratory in 2010; it details the requirements of researchers wishing to gain funding from the US Federal Government by developing techniques to hone in on individuals in crowds, to detect antagonistic attitudes among the “clutter” of innocents.

The prime directive to protect national security, counter ‘insurgency’, and generally ‘keep the peace’, however, means the technology that is developed will spread beyond airports and be used for wider civilian applications, such as “crowd control and in antidrug, anticrime, and immigration enforcement.” In fact, applications in the civilian economy are said to be plentiful, and also include “border security, and ensuring the security of government and private personnel and property”.

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What’s Next, Watson?

Watson AI JeopardyDid anyone catch the Watson Jeopardy man vs machine gameshow showdown last week?  The whole affair was a brilliantly “engineered” commercial for IBM. The company has already received contracts for its next-gen AI.

Fahmida Y. Rashid at eWEEK writes:  Watson handily defeated its human opponents during the two-game tournament that aired between Feb. 14 and Feb. 16 the real story is not about a computer smart enough to compete, and win, on a challenging game show, but rather, the advent of computers capable of understanding questions and coming up with relevant answers.  This is “just the beginning of a journey,” Katharine Frase, vice president of industry solutions and emerging business at IBM Research, told eWEEK.

IBM didn’t waste any time, announcing on Feb. 17 a collaboration with Columbia University, University of Maryland, and  Nuance  Communications to develop a physicans’ assistant service that can collect a patient’s health information and analyze it for medical diagnosis. Other health care applications include being able to automatically identify and flag anomalies on MRIs and other images that a radiologist may miss. The speech-recognition technology from Nuance will also help Watson hear people, a skill it could have used during the first game.

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