A couple years back, unbeknownst to many members of the British public, the government of the United Kingdom quietly retrofit eight train stations across the country with artificial intelligence (AI)-driven facial recognition and surveillance technology.
The purpose of the technology is to inspect travelers' faces for the purpose of determining their emotional states in order to deliver targeted advertising to people as they use public transport. One example of this might be a rotating digital billboard system of the future that targets "sad" travelers with advertisements for antidepressant drugs from Big Pharma.
The AI surveillance trial involved a combination of "smart" CCTV cameras that can detect objects or movements from captured images. A network of older cameras was also used to feed live video footage into a cloud-based analysis system to assess each traveler's age, gender and potential emotions simply based on appearance.
Because such technology is "unreliable," according to scientists who argue that it should be banned entirely, the Information Commissioner's Office, ICO, which regulates data in the UK, issued a public statement warning against the use of emotion analysis. The technology is "immature," says the ICO, and "may not work yet, or indeed ever."
Even so, the program was launched regardless and has been running for several years now.
"Our betters in government departments decided they would use the cameras to scan people's expressions, and record whether they were happy, angry or sad," explains James Macpherson about the program.
"Because it's not enough for the government to know where you're going. They need to know what's going on inside your head."
Authoritarians are peeping toms
For whatever reason, the anti-social despots in government love to watch everything that people do. These peeping toms are not content with simply monitoring what they can see; they also want to monitor what they cannot see going on inside your head.
The powers that be (TPTB) also love money, and more of it can be made if the despots in charge are able to probe the inner workings of your mind in order to sell you more stuff you probably do not need.
"Why provide the service you're supposed to provide when you can snoop on people's expressions and, wait for it, use the data to 'maximize advertising and retail revenue?'" Macpherson further writes about what he was told by National Rail, the UK's train service, is one of the purposes of the spying program.
"But seriously, trust us, the main thing was making sure everyone was happy," he jokes.
It turns out that many members of the British public who found out way after the fact about the program are upset that it exists, and that they were never told about it.
"The AI legend is a legend," noted someone in the comments. "Behind any AI, there are software programmers, people, whose knowledge is what makes any AI work and do what it was programmed to do."
"If the developer guys made a mistake the software will be faulty, too like wrong decisions similarly to electric cars slaughtering walking dogs. Because of it they are extremely dangerous and of course an ideal scape goat for any harm. No one is responsible, the AI did it."
Another added similar skepticism to the conversation concerning the facial recognition aspect of the technology.
"With the COVID shots, people got 'inbuilt' nanotech sensors," this person added about how the "fully vaccinated" are being watched. "My bet is on them."