Police Turn To Artificial Intelligence To Detect Child Abuse Images

in #news7 years ago


In the next few years, police officers in London think that AI will be capable of helping them to sort through images of child abuse. At the moment, officers themselves in forensics departments are the ones who have to look over photographs of victims in order to give them a certain grade relating to specific sentencing.

They are hoping that in the future they can turn to machine learning to do the job so that they can cut back on some of the trauma that officers endure from having to look over these images.

Right now, their artificial intelligence software is allegedly efficient only when it comes to identifying images such as weapons, drugs, or money. But it's still got a lot of work to do when it comes to identifying child abuse images.

At the moment, the AI that they've been using to scan through images allegedly keeps identifying wallpaper photos of deserts as images of a naked body. It mistakes the sand color for skin. Though, they think that they are only a couple of years away from improving on that.

The Metropolitan Police force will be looking to move their data to cloud providers like those such as Amazon Web Services, Google, or Microsoft.

And moving the sensitive data to cloud services is one move that critics say could put the sensitive material more at risk. These companies aren't immune to a privacy breach. And any bias in the algorithm could also pose a threat to civil liberties.

The head of the digital and electronics forensics team at the Met police department has insisted that corporations like Google have bigger budgets and therefore they're the better option to go with for storing the data.

He says that they have been working on a contract, terms and agreements, with certain cloud providers and it might not be that long before they take the next step.

They are hopeful that machines can be trained to identify the abusive images correctly in order to assign the appropriate grade. For the officers that have to be the ones to go through all of the images, it has the danger to promote some psychological issues later on for them. The goal is to eventually have AI scan confiscated devices like computers and smartphones in order to search for an identify any concerning videos and images of child abuse.

Pics:
Pixabay

Sources:
http://www.theweek.co.uk/artificial-intelligence/90509/police-to-use-ai-to-identify-child-abuse-images
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/12/18/artificial-intelligence-will-detect-child-abuse-images-save/
https://gizmodo.com/british-cops-want-to-use-ai-to-spot-porn-but-it-keeps-m-1821384511
http://technology.inquirer.net/70511/british-police-ai-keeps-tagging-desert-photos-as-nudes
https://www.inc.com/will-yakowicz/axon-artificial-intelligence-software-lapd-body-camera-footage.html
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/the-daily-need/are-we-becoming-a-police-state-five-things-that-have-civil-liberties-advocates-nervous/12563/
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23431254-000-ai-detective-analyses-police-data-to-learn-how-to-crack-cases/
http://www.ubergizmo.com/2017/12/police-use-ai-search-child-pornography/

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I don’t think it’s safe putting stuff like that out on google or whatever they use , if it gets into the wrong hands , it can be used against the government

I always wondered how people who work on issues like this can stand it. I can certainly relate to being traumatized by seeing graphic images and videos of abuse. I have mixed feelings about relying on AI to potentially identify abuse against children. Would hate for anything to get missed.

Prevention is key in stopping it before it happens in the first place. Family first. Family values. Key is also in preventing trafficking in the first place, too.

Exactly! I co-founded an anti-human trafficking organization in my city and one of our biggest goals and services was educating parents and young people about how traffickers target young people and what the recruitment process looks like (and how to avoid it). Those guys are very smart businessmen and they know what qualities to look for in a young person. Of course, sometimes it's the parents themselves doing the trafficking because they are addicted to drugs, for example, and want the money. It's so sad. I'm glad there are more eyes being turned onto the issue, even if they are AI eyes.

And Trafficking is in Hollywood and all around the world. Great work for what you do, April. Very good. Education is vital. Sometimes, kids need to get out of broken homes and certain environments. And there are parents who cannot have kids that would love to take care of the kids in certain situations that can be pretty sad. I was homeschooled by my mom in Oregon. Born 1985. Grew up in a broken home. My dad was alcoholic and verbally abusive. It can be tough. But trafficking is much worse than just a broken home. I was a camp counselor for 5 years and was able to reach out to kids and that helps, too.

Wow Google is going to be possibly leading AI developer on this? that's kind of scary although its for a good cause! nice post :)

I am not sure if it is the best method, but I am very happy that they are doing things to improve and counteract the abuse, few things make me very angry one is the abuse of children
excellent work dear friend @doitvoluntarily, thank you very much for sharing this information
I wish you a great night

a truly extraordinary share will come back to me

Thank you very much for sharing the news among us and we look forward to your new news

AI is the future, but it concerns me just like it did before. Would it ignore rich people from everybody else? I just don’t belive in government. Its just another trick to make us belive they are actualy doing something for us ordinary people.
Resteemed!

The government should not do everything. It is better when we compete and do things ourselves to help each other. AI is a tool that can be used for good and bad.

The more AI envolves, the safer will be

Great post good news thanks for information

Get to the source of trafficking and not just the products from trafficking. Prevention can be better than correction, normally.