Keeping Your Home Safe with Artificial Intelligence

Talking about home security, people may think about dogs and guards. It is not wrong, but it is no longer the most effective method. Nowadays, people have started to use artificial intelligence as the “dogs and guards”. The idea of using A.I. exists mainly because even with guards and cameras, there is still an inevitable aspect which is human error. Using the AI can effectively reduce human error from existence. However, using A.I. still has some challenges today.

The first challenge is that the A.I. system is still expensive. The cost ranges from $20,000 for eight cameras to $600,000 for large estates. Monitoring costs $8 to $12 an hour, but homeowners can choose when to turn them on. This level of security is highly functional; however, only wealthy homeowners and property owners can and are willing to offer. The following story revealed the point very well. A few years ago, the actor Joe Manganiello realized the weakness of his home security system. He was at home in Beverly Hills, California, with his wife, the actress Sofia Vergara, when he heard someone walking around their property. Ms. Vergara checked the security cameras and noticed they were blacked out. Two men on their property had been spray-painting the lenses for nearly 45 minutes, which the company monitoring the security feed had missed. “These guys were trying to crowbar in the kitchen window; then they moved to the living room door,” said Mr. Manganiello, who is known for his roles on “True Blood” and “Magic Mike.” “I was standing at the top of the stairs with a weapon.” When the men broke through the front door, the security alarm sounded and they ran off, he said. But the attempted break-in made him realize it was time for a security upgrade. What he did is to upgrade the security system to the one that used A.I. technology. A few months ago, Mr. Manganiello and Ms. Vergara’s home was targeted again. But this time, their new system from Edgeworth with geofencing technology and A.I.-enabled cameras detected three men before they could get close to the house. “As they were trying to figure out where to come in, the command center was guiding the police to our house,” Mr. Manganiello said. “They were able to apprehend them and their getaway driver before they could even touch the house.”

Another challenge that A.I. system has to deal with is the inherent biases in the computational systems. It means that in the real world, the commercial software is nearly flawless at telling the gender of white men, but not so for dark-skinned women. In 2015, there is even an rather insulting issue that the image-recognition photo app of Google mistakenly labeled photos of black people as “gorillas”, and Google had to apologize for that. Also A.I.-enhanced security systems still struggle to determine whether a nonwhite person was arriving as a guest, a worker or an intruder. The best way to avoid this bias is to let humans verify the videos.

However, even with such challenges, artificial intelligence, they say, can see more things faster than systems that rely on humans, who may not be paying attention. To apply A.I. technology into security system is still innovative, and it has a large potential. The home security is expected to be a $47.5 billion business by 2020. Home Security will grow into a huge business that no one can neglect. Other than that, the trend is to continuously apply innovative and advanced technology into daily life.

In conclusion, A.I. technology has been widely applied in various aspects in our life, and home security is very much likely to be the aspect that widely accepts A.I.. Probably in the near future, you will welcome the A.I. to be your “dogs and guards”.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/29/your-money/artificial-intelligence-home-security.html

3 thoughts on “Keeping Your Home Safe with Artificial Intelligence

  1. Artificial intelligence will be a revolutionizing technology for home security in next few years if some of the flaws can be improved. It is stated that recently the price of home security intelligence sets is highly expensive than regular cameras, and it does have problems on recognizing different races, and also the computational systems of the A.I. might still exists some bias. However, there are lots of positive sides that we can consider. For instance, artificial intelligence might recognize the faces of my friends, my cousins, who take regularly visits. Additionally, Wi-Fi connection is another advantage that can elevate the efficiency to response and detect movements when people’s home door or any home structure has been moved. One more advantage is that people can even download apps and connect to all their devices to keep track of their home security much better than just using normal cameras. At last, I think I would like to purchase a set of A.I. security system in the future and test it out the benefits of it.

  2. I think that using AI as home security is very practical. After learning about the Internet of Things in IST 110, it is evident that we are moving into a world largely influenced by technology, so it only make sense that technology would keep us safe. I understand the concern that technology can’t think ethically like a human can when it comes to decisions during a break in, but AI could be the first line of defense in ensuring safety. There has been research done that has discussed the creation of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). The AGI is considered to be technology that has reactions similar to a human’s reaction. The user/owner can set the AGI to their own preferences so it knows what they consider dangerous or when to lock doors or alert police. It could be catered to the home it’s protecting to make it personalized. AGI could be the first step in developing safety technology to increase the success of surveillance cameras and other forms of home security systems. I don’t think that AI can operate on it’s own in terms of home security, but I think that it is a fast first line of defense to help home owners feel safe.

    https://intelligence.org/why-ai-safety/

  3. The purpose of the artificial intelligence is to make people’s life more convenient through enabling objects can automatically interact with the surroundings. The safety of artificial intelligence things a controversial topic since AI existing. People will expect the objects are safety since they beginning to use them. Safety is a very serious topic, which is no only the technical issue. “If you just make AI that can align perfectly with whatever values you set it to, well the problem is, people can have a range of values, and some of them are bad. Just merely matching AI, aligning it to whatever value you specify I think is not good enough. It’s a good start, it’s a good big picture goal to make AI safe, and the technical element is a big part of it; but again, I think safety also means policy and norm-setting.” Patrick Lin, a philosopher at California Polytechnic said. The safety of AI is a complex problem that interact with moral, political and human value.
    How researchers or engineering can make AI more safety and reliable has become the key point to revolute the AI industry. Microsoft’s chatbot, Tay is a recent example that how researchers resolving the safety problem. They found applying traditional security techniques to AI is an available path to achieve the safety of AI. May be engineering can build a system to prevent a malicious attacker, which likes the system to prevent virous, and then AI will not have unexpected reaction.

    https://futureoflife.org/2017/09/21/safety-principle/?cn-reloaded=1

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