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NYC Subway Using AI to Track Fare Evasion
Surveillance software that uses artificial intelligence to spot people evading fares has been quietly rolled out to some of New York City’s subway stations and is poised to be introduced to more by the end of the year, according to public documents and government contracts obtained by NBC News.
The system, which the city and its transit authority haven’t previously acknowledged by name, uses third-party software that its maker has touted as a way to engage law enforcement to help crack down on fare evasion.
The system was in use in seven subway stations in May, according to a report on fare evasion published online by the Metropolitan Transit Authority, which oversees New York City’s public transportation. The MTA expects that by the end of the year, the system will expand by “approximately two dozen more stations, with more to follow,” the report says. The report also found that the MTA lost $690 million to fare evasion in 2022.
Tim Minton, the MTA’s communications director, said the videos are stored on the MTA’s servers and are kept “for a limited period.” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office announced last year that the city’s transit systems had more than 10,000 surveillance cameras.
The use of the software adds to what some privacy advocates see as a growing surveillance apparatus developing in New York City.
Teens Are Using Social Media to Diagnose Themselves With ADHD, Autism and More. Parents Are Alarmed
Some people browse TikTok and Instagram for recipes, memes and colorful takes on the news. Erin Coleman says her 14-year-old daughter uses these apps to search for videos about mental health diagnoses.
Over time, the teen started to self-identify with the creators, according to her mother, and became convinced she had the same diagnoses, including attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), depression, autism, mysophobia (an extreme fear of dirt and germs) and agoraphobia (a fear of leaving the house).
After undergoing testing for mental health and medical conditions, her daughter was diagnosed not with the long list of conditions she’d speculated about but with severe anxiety. “Even now, she doesn’t always think [the specialists] are correct,” Coleman said.
Social media platforms, including TikTok and Instagram, have come under mounting scrutiny in recent years for their potential to lead younger users to harmful content and exacerbate what experts have called a national mental health crisis among teens. But Coleman is one of nearly two dozen parents who told CNN that they are grappling with a different but related issue: teens using social media to diagnose themselves with mental health conditions.
The New CDC Director Has a Plan to Fix the Agency’s Trust Problem
When Dr. Mandy Cohen walked into the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta less than two weeks ago, she knew trust in America’s top health agency was broken.
Attacks on the agency’s scientific data and sometimes confusing public policy guidance were coming from Washington lawmakers, social media and people across the country.
In her first media interview as the new CDC director, Cohen said she is refocusing the agency on rebuilding faith with more transparency and improved communication and by “bringing the best evidence that we possibly can” to the public.
Howie Carr: COVID Panic Infected Freedom of Choice
Where do I go to get my reputation back? Back in May 2021, I was canceled from YouTube, and not for the first time. “Our team has reviewed your content and, unfortunately, we think it violates our medical misinformation policy.”
The charge: I had discussed “The Non-Existent Flu Season” with a Colorado ophthalmologist and online commentator, Dr. Brian Joondeph. The reason we discussed it on my radio show was simple. Because just as the Panic was ginned up and hundreds of thousands of Americans were being reported as victims, suddenly, virtually no one was dying from influenza.
One recurring theme on my show back then was the fact that to keep the Panic going, the Democrats were not telling the truth about COVID death statistics. Remember the motorcyclist killed in an Orlando traffic accident — COVID, or so the “experts” claimed. Two people shot to death in Colorado — you guessed it, COVID.
AI Companies Voluntarily Commit to Better Safety and Transparency but Can Ignore Pledges if They Want
Today, the Biden administration announced that it had secured voluntary commitments from leading AI firms to manage the risks posed by artificial intelligence.
The seven companies, Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI, all agreed to improve the safety, security, and transparency of their systems, including allowing reviews of their models by third-party experts. The seven companies immediately agreed to several specific points of concern surrounding the rollout of AI.
First, the companies committed to internal and external security testing of their AI systems before they are released to the public, as well as sharing information with relevant industry players, governments, academia, and the public to help manage AI risks.
The companies also agreed to measures to improve public trust in their systems, including developing a way to ensure that people know when they are seeing AI-generated content, such as watermarking or other measures. The companies will also prioritize research into the societal risks AI models pose, including racial and other forms of bias that can lead to discrimination, as well as “protecting privacy.”
‘I Warned You Guys in 1984 … and You Didn’t Listen’ — Director James Cameron Highlights Fears of AI Takeover
Director James Cameron claims he tried to warn people about the dangers posed by artificial intelligence (AI) in his 1984 movie “The Terminator” but that his concerns fell on deaf ears.
In a CTV News interview, the “Titanic” and “Avatar” director said he saw this problem coming a long time ago and is surprised that people are just now beginning to notice the dangers lurking ahead.
Cameron added that he “absolutely” shares the general consensus among various AI experts that rapidly advancing technology needs to be regulated to ensure it does not pose a threat to humanity.
As Katabella Roberts reports at The Epoch Times, Cameron also said he believes it is also important to ensure that the individuals and companies working on advanced AI technology are doing so for the right reasons, otherwise, there could be deadly consequences.
Amazon to Build $120 Million Facility in Florida to Prep Kuiper Internet Satellites for Launch
Amazon will invest $120 million to build a satellite processing facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, as the company prepares to launch the first satellites for its Project Kuiper internet network, the tech giant announced Friday.
Project Kuiper is Amazon’s plan to build a network of 3,236 satellites in low Earth orbit, to provide high-speed internet access anywhere in the world.
The 100,000-square-foot processing facility will serve as one of the final steps before the satellites reach orbit, preparing them for launches on the rockets of the United Launch Alliance and Jeff Bezos’ separately owned Blue Origin.
