Is T&T Missing an AI Opportunity?

PhD Student Matthew Parris calls out from the dungeon.

Matthew Parris remains undaunted. He has always been fearless and full of an awesome ‘Bible-sized’ faith, with which he throws himself blindly out into the world, believing that the world is a great big heart, which beats with possibility and the future...

It is dawn in Buckinghamshire, England and PhD student Matthew Parris descends into the “Dungeon” (the computer lab) at the University of Buckingham with a small container of food. He’s packed his breakfast/lunch because he’ll be in the lab for most of the day and night (without a distracting wifi connection to the outside world), feeding scores of video files into a computer that, if all goes well, will ultimately learn the tell-tale signs of violent behaviour, in order to ensure that intervention can happen before anyone is assaulted and hurt.

Matthew is a PhD candidate in Artificial Intelligence for Security Applications and his doctoral thesis involves the design of intelligent software intended to foresee criminal acts. While trying not to divulge too many specifics about his research, he explains that acts of violence – stabbing, shooting, punching – are often/always preceded by a series of actions that make the acts predictable.

“A fight scene has specific characteristics,” says Matthew, in a telephone interview from England, during a moment when he’s surfaced for air. “There’s a start, middle and end to every activity class: beating, fighting, stabbing, shooting. There are specific characteristics that define that activity and multiple ways it can be performed.” By inputting millions of video frames and instructing a computer to recognise violence at the “start”, you could end up with a crime predictor. When something can be predicted, it can theoretically be stopped.

Matthew grew up in Petit Valley/Diego Martin, interested in computing and robotics from childhood. His television mentors were naturalist David Attenborough and Bill Nye the Science Guy (perhaps explaining that a computer can add 120,000 numbers in the time it takes a hummingbird to flap its wings just once). As a mere boy, he built a go-cart intended to run on battery power, but he didn’t have a battery. “All I had was a power cord” and so “It would only go the distance from the plug”

Matt comes from hard-working, ‘roots’ folk – those who own none of the world’s resources but own all of its spirit. Folks who live with a fierce, back-strengthening faith. A devotee of cricket and football, he recalls being picked for a Junior West Indies Team while he was still in secondary school. There was just one big obstacle – money. He couldn’t afford to attend the try-outs. “My mum”, he says, “is gifted in the kitchen. There is little she can’t or won’t do. She made tamarind balls, sold barbecue after barbecue, and sought support from others to get me there. But it just wasn’t enough and in fairness, she returned the money ‘to those kind people who did dip in their pockets”.

He undertook his tertiary education at English universities, first at London Metropolitan, doing a Bachelor’s of Science, and then onto Anglia Ruskin for a Master’s in Cyber Security. In 2018, with savings he thought sufficient to take him through his PhD and a “souped-up” Macintosh computer, he set out on an arduous doctoral journey. He was presented with an acknowledgment token in the first three months of study for obtaining one of the highest grades in the development of an A.I. Simulation. His capability is unquestioned.

But today there are echoes of not making the cricket team as he finds himself struggling to make tuition and board. Matthew very soon realised that he didn’t have near enough money to meet the daunting costs. “I came with all of my savings, but I watched that money disappear as though it were thrown on a fire”. He sought employment and, given his background and research area, companies were interested in hiring him. He, however, always fell at the final hurdle because his student visa prohibits full-time employment. On the matter of his ‘souped up’ computer, his lecturers were plain: ‘This machine is not going to work’. It has worked, however, to this point, well beyond the halfway mark of the PhD, but it can carry him no further.

Yet Matthew kept at it, fully believing in the real-world applications of his research, working cheek by jowl in The Dungeon with other international students who were wrestling with their own funding shortfalls while also trying to concentrate on the work at hand.

It’s a slippery slope. Seen from the ground, the distance between the people who have and those who have to live without could as well be Mt. Everest. Along the way, our societies lose many demoralised, talented youths who, at one time or another bravely, attempted to climb that mountain.

Matthew Parris remains undaunted. He has always been fearless and full of an awesome ‘Bible-sized’ faith, with which he throws himself blindly out into the world, believing that the world is a great big heart, which beats with possibility and the future. Time and time again, Matthew Parris has had to bridge the gap between his outsized talents and the hole in his pocket.

What can make a difference?

How can T&T help a computer scientist and native son, who has undertaken the requisite research work and is willing to bring his solutions and services to our nation and the region, in order to alleviate our security woes? Financial support for the cost of the TPU processing computer, which is what Matthew needs, is £4,000. His tuition fee for one year is £12,000.

Matt has just a year and a half left to reach the PhD finish line. That line is so ‘tantalizingly close!’ His TOTAL financial need is therefore: £22,000.

University officials have come to know Matthew well, as he exhausts every possible avenue for funding. “Not becoming a pest,” he says, “but looking for a solution.” They’ve provided “sustenance” when he needed it most during the height of the COVID lockdowns, not just for him but for other international students in similar circumstances. He has exhausted his funds and has even tried the GoFundMe option.

“What motivates me is that I am doing this for my mum, for my Caribbean people, for the betterment of humanity,” he says. “I have gotten this far, and I will get there”.

Matthew has put the Caribbean on the very cutting edge of Global Technology, and he can cross the Rubicon only if we can push him over the tipping point. It is the power of the collective that has worked for the region over the centuries, and it is what is needed now – not just for Matthew but for all of the brilliant young minds who don’t have a gold spoon - or a guava stick to hold on. Instead, they hang on to the dream that help will come – in the nick of time.

How Crime Prediction AI Would Work

Let’s say that someone in public is going to shoot someone else. If there were cameras monitoring the area, and Artificially Intelligent crime prediction software running behind that video, that software could conceivably alert law enforcement to intervene before the violent act was committed.

Matthew explains that this is possible by uploading thousands of videos of non-violent acts that are then compared with thousands more violent acts. “Our mobile phones and the Internet of things is creating a lot of data. And in England, there are loads of cameras.”

This is the data he is wrestling with on a machine ill-equipped for the task. His research, of course, is a model that would have to be adapted for actual law enforcement application. “I don’t want to say I’m Superman and I’m going to solve the world’s problems. But once I can complete this course of study, I can move on to the Real World.”

It is his intention to ensure that the Caribbean islands stay in step with the cutting edge of global AI technology and that, when that technology is deployed, a native son this time will be the one at the console. Matt thinks it’s the job of young people everywhere to leap – but he also knows very intimately that they need a community for lift-off.

Matthew Parris is scheduled to be awarded a PhD degree in May of 2023 in A.I. Automated Recognition of Suspicious Activities.

PhD student Matthew Parris can be reached at +44 7795 223776 or by email at: mmgp0@hotmail.com