Invented at Duke, Financed in Beijing: Powerful Camera Shows China’s AI Ambition

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-a-powerful-spy-camera-invented-at-duke-ended-up-in-chinas-hands-1528714895

by mudil • 8 years ago

110 33 8 years ago

wsj.com

fvdessen• 8 years ago

Ironically the thick air pollution seems to drastically impair the performance of their surveillance solution.

dick_sucker2• 8 years ago

How is that ironic?

sangnoir• 8 years ago

In the Alanis Morissette way, I guess.

horsecaptin2• 8 years ago

I often wish security cameras in the US were more powerful. They're terrible at identifying useful information from a crime in progress: license plates, face and clothing... the important bits are always blurry.

ttul2• 8 years ago

They are especially bad at identifying police.

HillaryBriss• 8 years ago

yes. they're switched off at just the wrong times...

dmm• 8 years ago

Very good cameras are available in the US, people are bad at placement and choosing appropriate cameras. They install cameras too high up to capture faces and choose cameras with extremely wide views. If you concentrate your pixels on a smaller area you are more likely to get a useful image.

A quick test is to have a friend put on a hoodie and creep around your house at different times of day. How many clear shots of their face do you get? Or are you just capturing the top of their head? In my experience if you don't have a face or a license plate the police aren't interested.

AlexCoventry• 8 years ago

Curious about the circumstances which cause you to often wish that.

horsecaptin2• 8 years ago

Usually at parking spots outside businesses. Or parking areas in general - another friend's catalytic converter got stolen because he drives an SUV and the ground clearance allows for very easy cutting.

In both cases, the camera footage was utterly useless.

gm-conspiracy• 8 years ago

Just run the footage through a DNN and put whatever face you want on it.

7373737373• 8 years ago

Hedge funds will love this

Beefin• 8 years ago

Paywall?

bentpins• 8 years ago

http://facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.wsj.com/articles/how...

kencausey• 8 years ago

Can I suggest the alternative of https://archive.is/https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-a-powerf... ?

appleflaxen• 8 years ago

I was excited to see your trick, but it didn't work for me.

steve19• 8 years ago

“A government doesn’t need the hand of technology to be oppressive,” he said.

I interpret that as meaning "They will do bad things with or without me". An interesting twist on the usual "I am not responsible for what my customers do with my product".

baybal2• 8 years ago

Good quality general purpose video cameras + FPGAs to flatten and combine video.

ttul2• 8 years ago

... and a very willing investor.

peter303• 8 years ago

The US is falling behind in allocating sufficient capital to develop technological advances. Thank God there are backups.

__blockcipher__• 8 years ago

Mr. Brady, who remains Aqueti’s biggest shareholder, said he has no qualms about aiding China’s surveillance system, which critics claim leads to humans-rights abuses.
“A government doesn’t need the hand of technology to be oppressive,” he said.

maxander• 8 years ago

Of course they don’t. They just need complacent accomplices, such as Mr. Brady.

samch• 8 years ago

...and Duke University itself which owns the IP and is likely also a shareholder in this venture.

codeulike• 8 years ago

Such a stupid argument. So you have two factors: X and Y that contribute to bad thing Z. Decreasing X (surveillance technology in this case) will decrease Z, even if Y (oppressive-minded government) remains the same. But his statement is aimed to occlude that obvious fact through sophistry.

I don't really need to point out the other obvious place where the same argument often gets used.

flak48• 8 years ago

This exact argument is used by the Indian Government too when questioned about the very-real surveillance possibilities enabled by Aadhaar.

akavel• 8 years ago

galactus• 8 years ago

Another version of "guns don't kill people, people kill people"

Bucephalus355• 8 years ago

The worst mass deaths under Chinese Communism occurred during the huge famine of 1959-1961. About 50 million people died who shouldn’t have died. Mass numbers of anything are hard to wrap our minds around, but essentially this was the Holocaust times 4.

I wish I could say Justice would be dispensed to the Western collaborators of totalitarian regimes, but both the Koch’s and IBM sold extensively to the Nazi’s, and only grew richer later.

v_lisivka• 8 years ago

It's Holocaust times 10: 4,5 million of Jews were died (6 millions if children are counted, children are not counted back then). But you may want to compare Chinese Famine with Holodomor: 7 millions of Ukrainians are killed using hunger by Stalin communists in USSR (30 millions if children are counted), so Chinese Famine is 6x larger.

anomie31• 8 years ago

The Nazis didn't just kill jews in the Holocaust.

hnisgroupthink• 8 years ago

More propaganda backed by clickbait. Ban news sites please.

Here's a guideline: If different people write the story than the headlines ban the site.

Invented at Duke, Financed in Beijing: Powerful Camera Shows China’s AI Ambition

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