Chicago Police Department goes hi tech to catch murderers in the act
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF With the number of shootings and murders in Chicago spiralling the Chicago Police Department have joined other cities in rolling out sensor and software networks that catch killers in the act. In a cramped office in a police station in Chicago’s 11th district, the...
US Intelligence director: “AI will replace 75 percent of spies”
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF One day the world’s best spy could very well be an AI, and that’s bad news for Starbuck’s whose biggest coffee shop is on the NSA campus… The rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI), and an increasingly connected society has already, according to the UK’s...
Elbit’s persistent surveillance drone can watch entire cities in real time
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF In an age where threats can lurk anywhere authorities are calling out for new surveillance systems that can watch entire areas, or cities, in real time, and industry is answering them. Yesterday at the Paris Airshow Elbit Systems, an Israeli defence company, demonstrated their new,...
Futurist keynote, Dubai: The Future of Minds &Machines, Dubai IAICC International Innovation Conference
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Dubai is a city that was gifted nothing, and had to build and earn everything, and it was a great honour to speak there, in a place that is rapidly becoming the very embodiment of the future. Dubai Dubai so good they named it...
Companies want to use AI to judge your ‘Character’ from just a photo
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF We are well on the path to creating a society shaped and guided by digital, and genetic, profiling and that can be a good, and a bad, thing. Dangerous dystopian tech, or a must have pre-crime tech in an increasingly dangerous world? I’ll let...
Hackers have found a new way to hack Samsung’s iris security system
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Biometric security systems are awesome, until they’re hacked, and increasingly companies and individuals are finding that their latest and greatest biometric security systems are easier to hack than the password systems they replaced Criminals know you love taking selfies, and they love your selfies...
Terrorists are using ‘Photo morph’ fraud to circumvent border security
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As companies race to create new biometric security systems, criminals are busy finding new ways to beat them and the Photo Morph is the latest example. Biometric systems, like the ones being rolled out in the airports in Australia, were supposed to be the...
Dubai’s first Robocop starts active duty
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF It is inevitable that robots will take a more dominant role in our society and by rolling out the world’s first robot police force Dubai has taken the first big step. Almost two years after their initial announcement the world’s first robot policeman has...
Brain scan experiment detects guilt, opens the way for pre-crime tech
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Being able to detect that someone feels guilty could be used to detect the likelihood of a crime happening, as well as assign blame after the event. Neuroscientists around the world have been trying to decipher the brain and all of its beautiful complexity...
Dubai will start replacing real police officers with robo-cops in May
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As robots, and robo systems, become more capable countries are finding new uses for them, this will be the first time robo-cops are used en masse to assist the public. Dubai is a country, or more specifically an Emirate, that’s not just looking to...
Scientists 3D print an Eagle eye camera that’s smaller than a human hair
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF There are plenty of devices today that are too small, or lack the computing power to accommodate a traditional camera, new micro-cameras overcome all those issues. It seems that you can’t go anywhere nowadays without a camera tracking you but as ubiquitous as they...
Researchers hack classified air gapped systems using drones and LED’s
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Air gapped systems are used to hold and protect top secret data, and they’re becoming increasingly vulnerable to hacks. Air gapped computer systems have always held a special fascination for hackers – firstly because of the challenge that surrounds being able to hack a...
Syria returns 50,000 seeds to the Global Seed Bank
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The global seed bank at Svalbard in the depths of the Arctic Circle is humanity’s last line of defence that prevents crucial crops being lost forever Today, the seeds of over 50,000 different varieties of crops, including cabbages, wheat, lettuce, sweet peas, and many others,...
Researchers use artificial intelligence to automatically age faces
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The ability to age people accurately is one of the cornerstone abilities that can help people find missing persons. People have been fascinated with age ever since, well, perhaps forever, and for many people being able to get a glimpse of how they’ll look...
Hunting terrorists and preventing suicides, inside Zuckerberg’s plan for AI
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Facebooks human operators can’t police everything on the network fast enough, so Zuckerberg is prioritising artificial intelligence In a letter published earlier this week Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook, the company that one day wants to be the world’s largest telepathic network, will be...
Massive new satellite network can watch everyone on Earth
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF A new, bolstered, space satellite system to keep watch over the world, it’s the equivalent of Tivo for Google Earth. Planet, a global satellite company, who recently bought mini-sat company Terra Bella from Google, is used to breaking records. In 2014, a rocket exploded...
China’s new climate control program is a monster
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF A large part of China is arid, with serious implications on the people’s livelihoods and health, the new climate control program will improve their living conditions. China, the world’s second largest economy, announced on Wednesday that it’s going to spend $168 million on a...
A fifth of the Dark Web just got shut down
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The Dark Web is home to criminals and political activists, and a hacker who went after the former just showed how vulnerable it is. Last weekend over 10,000 dark web sites were taken down in an attack that aimed to take down sites hosting child...
Google RAISR sharpens photos and gives you super vision
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Sight is one of our most crucial senses, now one technology promises infinite zoom and super crisp images. Let’s face it – the last thing many of us want it to take what we think is a great family photo only to find out...
A connected heart just helped convict a man of arson
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Connecting devices to each other and to the internet can make them much smarter, and much more usable, but increasingly companies and law enforcement are using connected devices to track, log and analyse our activities, and that has some serious privacy implications People have...
