In Shenzhen city in China, police are looking to completely automate some traffic police work, particularly when it involves pedestrians.
The local police have tied up with a company called Intellifusion to have an artificial intelligence monitor traffic cameras and automatically issue fines for foot traffic violations.
If you jaywalk i.e. cross the road when the signal is red, the system can simply pick out your face using facial recognition technology, match you with national citizen records, and issue you a fine directly to your phone through an SMS.
Gizmodo
Cameras at major traffic points are already outfitted with the basic software to pick out and tag faces and match them to records. Now, the plan is to work with mobile carriers and apps like WeChat to notify rule-breakers immediately. Basically, you can illegally cross the road, but you¡¯ll get a fine by the time you reach the other side, as well as have your face and violation displayed on a small digital billboard.
China has a pretty intensive surveillance network after all, which is expected to have over 600 million AI-powered CCTV cameras by 2020. They can track citizens, identify their vehicles, and even who your friends are according to the BBC.
In fact, some areas of the country have already begun moving this technology to portable sunglasses for local police, in order to catch known criminals trying to blend in with crowds at railway stations.
However, while experts agree with the reasons the police would want to crack down on jaywalking, they worry about the obvious concerns of people being misidentified, as well as the overall increase in surveillance it indicates in the country.