Breaking news from the defense industry shows new artificial intelligence technology could help U.S. Army personnel detect items like guns, tanks and drones in warfighter scenarios.
Actually, reports of developments by the Acrarithm company out of Huntsville, Alabama look more like general purpose technologies that could be deployed in defense scenarios or at home, for example, in school safety setups.
Staff reporters for WHNT News 19 report that Acrarithm’s AI will use sophisticated image processing to detect physical threats in the form of firearms or other larger weapons: “guns, drones or tanks.”
Then, theoretically, these technologies could be deployed by police departments tasked with protecting civilian sites like local schools and hospitals, in detecting the smaller firearms that so many of us now fear.
It’s a much needed service in America today, in a context described by a timely psychology report in December 2019 this way:
“Despite common fears, differences in attitudes and feelings about guns themselves manifest in variable degrees of support for or opposition to gun control legislation that are often exaggerated within caricatured depictions of polarization…”
Still, critics may have questions about how well the AI image processing enhances existing vigilance by administrators and other pairs of human eyes, in terms of identifying a gun entering a building.
“Loosely defined, artificial intelligence describes machines that may demonstrate human behavior and learn from the data they digest,” wrote Edward Baig in a USA Today piece covering this issue early in 2019, thinking about limitations of the tech in aiding safety teams. “False positives sometimes arise.”
Look for more news on these sorts of artificial intelligence predictive and sentinel technologies to change the equation on keeping populations safe – or deploying troops to warfighting situations.
