Published By: MSN/Bloomberg News, 3/26/2017

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Summary

Reza Zadeh, a professor at Stanford University, has begun an artificial intelligence (AI) startup called Matroid whose software can detect specific people or objects in video streams. The user specifies what they are looking for, using example images and video or preset options, and the algorithms find corresponding people or objects in different videos. This approach could prove useful for businesses, law enforcement, and political and social science.

Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level of Article: 10.2

Extended Discussion Questions

• If you had free access to Matroid’s service, what might you want to look for, in what kinds of video streams?
  • How could a system like Matroid help you in your schoolwork?
• Other than those mentioned in the article, what are some other places a system like Matroid could be useful?
• Do you think Matroid could be used to reduce crime? Why or why not?
  • How might it be used for that purpose?
  • What could be some drawbacks of using a system like Matroid this way? (Prompts: Privacy issues? Chilling effects? Bias in the training data?)
• If your town’s police department wanted to use Matroid to analyze video from police body cameras or dashcams, what questions might you have about how they would store and analyze that data?
  • About how they would store the videos or images you used as examples for your queries?
• If you had a business that wanted to use Matroid to detect certain things in your surveillance videos, what questions or concerns might you have?
• How do you think Matroid might influence how businesses and law enforcement use surveillance and security systems?
• The article gives the example of measuring how much television time a political candidate gets. Do you think research like that has a chance of influencing politics, media coverage, or even election results?

Relating This Story to the CSP Curriculum Framework

Global Impact Learning Objectives:

• LO 7.3.1 Analyze the beneficial and harmful effects of computing.
• LO 7.4.1 Explain the connections between computing and real-world contexts, including economic, social, and cultural contexts.

Global Impact Essential Knowledge:

• EK 7.2.1A Machine learning and data mining have enabled innovation in medicine, business, and science.
• EK 7.3.1A Innovations enabled by computing raise legal and ethical concerns.
• EK 7.3.1G Privacy and security concerns arise in the development and use of computational systems and artifacts.
• EK 7.3.1J Technology enables the collection, use, and exploitation of information about, by, and for individuals, groups, and institutions.
• EK 7.3.1L Commercial and governmental curation of information may be exploited if privacy and other protections are ignored.

Other CSP Big Ideas:

• Idea 3 Data and Information
• Idea 4 Algorithms

Banner Image: “Network Visualization – Violet – Offset Crop“, derivative work by ICSI. New license: CC BY-SA 4.0. Based on “Social Network Analysis Visualization” by Martin Grandjean. Original license: CC BY-SA 3.0.