AI cameras allegedly used at London stations to spot passengers’ emotions without them knowing

31 comments

1. I genuinely couldn’t care less – this could be done by any CCTV watching employee, albeit far less efficiently. If British Rail wants to automate its detection of my displeasure at their shitty services, be my guest.

2. Isn’t the UK the country with the most CCTV cameras in the world? There are signs everywhere.

   I’ve never really bought into the fear mongering of AI and facial recognition.

   I was never unaware that if I’m on camera in a public place… someone might look at the footage! it’s kind of a given.

   AI can cut down many hours of footage to something much more useable. Then a Person can spend less time sitting there watching it! Sounds great.

3. This could be so good. If the world wasn’t ruled by greed and hatred this could be so so good.

   But, you know, it won’t be.

4. All part of turning the public into an observed, watched and tracked slave class.

   Better not have any subversive thoughts! Or your social credit score will go down and all of a sudden you can’t leave your city.

5. _“miserable, busy, forlorn, irritated, lonely, high as a kite, drunk, drunk and high as a kite, happy … no wait he’s also high as a kite .. oo hang on yes, eh Dave ‘ave you seen this bloke? Very terroristy if you ask me. Oh wait no I think it’s heartburn, yeah he’s getting a rennie from smiths … nevermind. Now where was I .. miserable, busy, miserable ….”_

6. So, am I right that station thieves and various criminals are worried about better police equipment? However, they can’t say so directly, so they pretend they want privacy.

7. I welcome this.

   My local train station trialed face recognition cameras and the only people it upset were the gang members who decided they would hoody and face mask up.

8. I honestly believe we will probably end up with a China style social credit system within the next, maybe 10 years?

   People just don’t give a fuck about this kind of shit.

   And if you tell the average, law abiding person “hey, you want free stuff? Discounted rail travel? Discounted food? Discounted holidays? Just keep doing you. You don’t have to change, just keep being you” – MOST will be okay with that.

   Because why the fuck wouldn’t you be?

9. It could be the happiest day of my life but I’d still have the same neural slightly annoyed expression as I walk through Victoria station on my commute. Good luck reading my commute face.

10. Well… if they knew it would invalidate the test innit

11. Ok so I guess dust off the covid masks if you care about this

12. Why? Just assume that everyone is pissed off or depressed you’d be right 99% of the time.

13. Everyone worrying about what inept companies are doing with AI and not asking what military applications are being developed.
    AI for CCTV is hardly alarming if anything it might help victims by at least alerting a human to look at a particular screen.

14. Keep smiling if you want the train door to open lol, they actually have that in China in some work environments

15. Surely if it’s in public then there is no need for them to obtain our permission on it?

16. Couldn’t they use this in town centres to identify assaults, fights, and even simple falls? Then have the footage immediately saved and a copper or other responder there in a flash. 

    I guess the danger is that it is used to identify pre-crimes. “The AI shows you were beginning to get irritated with a chance you would lash out. Here’s a hefty fine and some community service despite you not committing an actual crime”. 

17. The apparatus is going to explode trying to figure my mood because I look the same in all situations

    Planes crashed into WTC – standard look and “oh?”

    Russia invaded Ukraine – standard look and “huh?”

    The entire next weeek is going to be sunny and 23 degrees – standard look and “really?”

    Sir, your zipper is undone – standard look and “hmm”

18. So now they’ll know for sure that we’re pissed off, stressed and over hot every time they delay or cancel a train, or go on strike for some bullshit reason, all the while charging us a fucking fortune?

19. Just in time while they also push cashless society. Full control. UK public is so dense.

20. But I have a resting bitch face.

    Is that going to skew the data?

21. When I used facial recognition software at uni that could detect participant’s emotions, I had to get explicit consent from participants that I could a) use that software and b) keep their data. I don’t really understand why this is allowed to happen to the public without informed consent.

    I’m not against it explicitly, and I know CCTV is everywhere, I just genuinely don’t understand what the laws, ethics, and justifications are for things like this.

22. After watching people taking drugs inside Whitechapel station, there’s no point to any of this.

23. How about spotting WANTED Criminals using the Met Police database facial template ? Doh !

24. Emotion detection has been around for a while. One potential use case is detecting potential suicides on railway stations. Another is helping to detect where frustration or boredom might be spawning in a complex environment like a theme park or cruise ship, enabling e.g. extra staff to be deployed.

25. China using AI to control the population – this is bad we must stop China

    Britain using AI to control the population – surveil me harder daddy

26. Oh nice! I love the future. Technology is great! Britain is great!

    *cries*

27. Wow! If only we hadn’t voted to leave a group of countries that saw this specific threat coming and regulated against it. See the EU AI Act banning of Automatic Emotion Recognition.

    But what there’s more! We couldn’t even be bothered to write laws so we paid consultant’s to write guidelines for us that are utterly unenforceable and will be largely ignored and then crowed about regulation being anti innovative.

    Honestly at this point we deserve this.

28. I find it genuinely astonishing that anyone can be apathetic about facial recognition being used in this manner. 

29. Wow in the most surveillanced country in the world??? What a surprise!

30. There’s no such thing as AI and it’s impossible to predict emotion from 2nd hand source.

    Emotions are not gaseous signatures you can pick up on a filter.

31. Gotta bust out the Patrick Bateman stoneface look walking down the street💀