In the case of societal security v personal privacy

The big picture

Video surveillance has unlocked a world of new possibilities—protecting individuals and communities, streamlining work processes, and informing decisions regarding your customer base. However, the ethical impact of video monitoring and its bearing on personal privacy has increasingly come into the spotlight.

In cases where security and compliance are critical, such as public health awareness, the time between an incoming image and the intervention could have severe — and potentially devastating — consequences. While decision-making still lies firmly in the hands of humans, AI assistance is needed to enhance the ability to process footage responsibly and ethically.

The challenge

Building an airtight case for a safer society

At the time of this project, the COVID-19 pandemic had caused a worldwide shutdown. The regulations announced to reduce transmission included a mandatory distance of 2 meters between persons in public settings to be consistently maintained.

Fractal developed a mechanism to track non-compliance with social distancing guidelines in collaboration with a drone manufacturing company. The project was overseen by a public authority to help drive public health awareness and compliance via streamed video feeds.

The transformative solution

Fractal aimed to develop an intelligent solution for quick decision-making through instant alerts triggered by social distancing non-compliance. We needed to reduce the human effort required to monitor CCTV footage to achieve the desired outcome. Due to the ethical implications of mass surveillance, the solution was designed within a framework of responsible AI.

The transformative solution

Fractal Responsible AI (RAI) framework

Every decision rule of an AI algorithm draws upon human-made assumptions. Moreover, the data used by the algorithm are not objective reflections but according to the context used to generate the data. A human dimension underpins our AI framework; hence the whole life cycle of AI created is governed by a sequence of principles and behaviors.

We envision our AI as human-designed entities reflecting human values. By examining the present applications of AI, we have identified vital behaviors driven by principles that can help keep dangers posed by artificial intelligence at bay.

Foundational Principles Encouraging Behaviors

Transparency

All deserve white-box decision choice

Human-Centricity

Evaluate biases

Accountability

Humans responsible

Privacy & Safety

Respect and protection from mis-use

Fairness

Inclusion and equity as default

Contestability

Newspaper test

Explainability

Decision factors traceable

Adaptability

Augment signals and update

The transformative solution

Cross-examining the ethical objections

To ensure the solution complied with the RAI framework, rigorous questions preceded each phase of the AI project development lifecycle with an interdisciplinary team of experts, including legal, domain, product, AI, and engineering specialists. During this process, it became evident that the solution needed to pivot on three primary principles: privacy, transparency, and accountability. Every phase of the development process incorporated these foundational principles.

Problem Definition:

What will be the purpose of the AI? Who are our stakeholders? Who benefits from this? Could this cause harm - intentional or not?

Data Input:

Is the data generation and collection process well understood? Do we know if there are any prior interventions or modifications done? Is the data representative of the real world?

Model Building:

Are our algorithms and models free of bias?

Have we done the necessary due-diligence?

What are the limitations of the models?

Output Evaluation:

What is the format and type of outputs we will produce? Is the model trustworthy? Are we able to interpret the decisions the AI makes?

Implementation:

What is the nature of decisions we are impacting and for whom? How will the outputs be used? Are there any AI alteration risks? Who should have access to what information?

What we enabled Evidence that responsible

Fractal designed a solution that monitored and reported real-time social distance violations. A dashboard provided visualized analytics of KPIs, such as the number of infringements and the severity of each incident based on determined thresholds by location.

We did additional solution development to incorporate the three fundamental principles of responsible AI implementation into the final design. After the challenge of each principle was outlined, a solution aligned with the ethical AI framework was developed.

How can we protect individual privacy while handling sensitive information to help law enforcement?

Enable the categorization of objects while maintaining their privacy.

How should such an AI-enabled behavioral compliance system be moderated and be made audit ready?

An AI surveillance system directly impacts society and its behavioral traits. The solution needed to operate with transparent guidelines and be auditable.

How can we achieve accountability alongside a combination of technology, policy, and legal frameworks to ensure that privacy rights are protected and the systems are used responsibly and effectively? Unblurred images provided information on a needto-know basis. As an individual was identified through unblurring, strict records needed to be kept for actualizing a chain of accountability.

Blurred detected objects on the video stream to deliver privacy.

The object was masked and encrypted to protect its identity.

Under public authority supervision, we successfully restricted the visibility and access control of the transparency view.

To ensure absolute transparency of the solution, only stakeholders with the correct authorization and encryption keys could unblur images and retrieve object identity.

Accountability becomes paramount because access to sensitive information is restricted based on necessity. Each access was recorded and auditable based on parameters including, but not limited to:

• Accessor details

• Accessed object details

• Timestamp

• Reason for process-access

• Retention period-record

AI adoption is not a far cry from its concept

The verdict is in: There is no defense for unethical AI implementation

The results

The immediate impact

Stakeholders had access to a complete view of social distancing compliance, empowering them to make quick decisions regarding infringements.

Innovative privacy-preserving technology

We created new cryptography-based privacy-preserving methods to collect and store information to protect individual privacy. The technology innovation enabled secure and safe video data storage while allowing enforcement agencies to operate with enough information to do their job.

Long-term benefits

With AI impacting every aspect of human life, creating safe, trustworthy, and unbiased solutions becomes essential. The development and implementation of this technology is a step in the right direction to striking the delicate balance between public interest and individual privacy.

Fractal proved its case for responsible AI adoption

Enable better decisions with Fractal

Fractal is one of the most prominent providers of Artificial Intelligence to Fortune 500® companies. Fractal’s vision is to power every human decision in the enterprise, and bring AI, engineering, and design to help the world’s most admired companies.

Fractal’s businesses include Crux Intelligence (AI driven business intelligence), Eugenie.ai (AI for sustainability), Asper.ai (AI for revenue growth management) and Senseforth.ai (conversational AI for sales and customer service). Fractal incubated Qure.ai, a leading player in healthcare AI for detecting Tuberculosis and Lung cancer.

Fractal currently has 4000+ employees across 16 global locations, including the United States, UK, Ukraine, India, Singapore, and Australia. Fractal has been recognized as ‘Great Workplace’ and ‘India’s Best Workplaces for Women’ in the top 100 (large) category by The Great Place to Work® Institute; featured as a leader in Customer Analytics Service

Providers Wave™ 2021, Computer Vision Consultancies Wave™ 2020 & Specialized Insights

Service Providers Wave™ 2020 by Forrester Research Inc., a leader in Analytics & AI Services Specialists Peak Matrix 2022 by Everest Group and recognized as an ‘Honorable Vendor’ in 2022 Magic Quadrant™ for data & analytics by Gartner Inc. For more information, visit fractal.ai

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