Many of us have heard the word Artificial Intelligence (AI) in various areas of our lives. For some it remains a mystery, while for others it is something they are living every day.
by Eng. Antonio Olmedo Morales*
In order to understand how the scope of artificial intelligence affects us today, let's look at some examples.
If you own a Google or Apple smartphone, you will know that they have a virtual assistant that with the simple command of "Hey Siri" or "Ey Google", we can ask anything (like a crystal ball) and get an answer to our need. All this action of listening to our voice, converting it to text, assimilating it as an instruction, doing the search on the network and transmitting it as a response is part of the magic of AI.
You may also have noticed that when you enter many pages of service companies, a virtual assistant asks you, "Can I help with something?" or "Do you have any queries?", and the moment you write your need, almost by magic, in a few seconds your remote assistant responds with options that you have for yourself, generating an almost instant interaction and taking you by the hand until you solve your concern or inconvenience. That assistant, which seems to be 24/7 just for you, is also a result of AI.
As you will see, today we are seeing more and more the fruits of the engineers' work behind these algorithms and the innovations and processing increases in modern computers.
The narrative around artificial intelligence (AI) went from a romanticized idea of machine insurrection to a recognition that AI drives real technologies and capabilities that enrich and improve people's lives every day.
In fact, International Data Corporation (IDC) forecasts that spending on AI technologies will increase to $97.9 billion by 2023, more than two and a half times the level of spending in 2019. The reality is that AI has been deployed for decades in a wide range of use cases to solve business problems, from managing and automating IT infrastructures and gathering new information about customers to identifying and responding to cyber threats and much more.
In the realm of physical security, more and more companies have improved their data-related capabilities and integrated AI into their business processes. In the coming years, it is very likely that AI will become even more prevalent. Just as mobile strategies have been internalized into business, very soon AI will be the standard, perhaps even sooner than we think.
The results of a McKinsey global survey suggest that organizations are using AI as a tool to generate value and that they plan to invest even more in AI in response to the COVID-19 pandemic to drive safer "back to work" strategies.
How is it reflected today in our market?
One of the great benefits of Artificial Intelligence is to generate situational information to its customers. We can mention as an example the classification of objects such as people, cars, trucks, motorcycles, dogs, cats in the same image or also being able to detect backpacks, laptops, portfolios, cell phones or guns all thanks to the processing that cameras, such as those of the Tyco Illustra line, has for you.
We can also understand behaviors in complex scenes, such as detecting loitering of suspicious people in perimeters or perhaps people running in areas where this situation is not normally common. All these intelligent algorithms in video systems such as Exacq or Video Edge allow end users to have a clearer picture of the situations that are happening in their environment and have a timely reaction to these incidents.
We know very well that the pandemic has changed our lives and artificial intelligence in a reader like the Illustra Insight with contactless 3D facial recognition, allows us to recognize 20 people at the same time avoiding turnstiles, preventing people from taking off their masks at the entrance and, most importantly, helping to reduce the chances of contagion in our workplaces.
With the examples mentioned above it is clear to us that data is the fuel that feeds AI and security systems gather a lot of information. This torrent of data is too large for human analysts to make the most of. Artificial intelligence helps solve this problem.
These days we've learned a lot during the pandemic, and it's possible that covering your face will become standard operating procedure as a first line of defense in a healthy workplace. In crowded environments, it can be difficult to control who has their face covered and who doesn't, especially without the help of AI:
• Video management systems like American Dynamics' victor employ AI to incorporate correct mask detection that helps reduce protocol non-compliance.
• Ai-powered searches allow individuals to be quickly located by their appearance by checking many cameras and detaining the suspect in a timely manner.
• AI algorithms allow you to create virtual borders that count people entering and leaving a defined area to respect occupancy limits and social distancing.
• Thermal cameras like the Illustra Thermal detect elevated skin temperatures as people enter the building with a difference of +-0.2 degrees to ensure that someone with a fever, the most common symptom of the disease, does not enter.
Clearly, Artificial Intelligence technology will mark a before and after in the evolution of security and we will have to be attentive as members of this industry to understand this new technology and offer it to our customers, since this new revolution is here to stay.
* Eng. Antonio Olmedo Morales, Security solutions manager Latam, Johnson Controls.
