Details of a new smart ‘no hands’ cruise control that uses facial recognition technology to make sure that the driver is paying attention are reported to have been revealed in correspondence between The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and auto manufacturer General Motors Co (GM).

Drive With No Hands On The Wheel.

A letter from the NHTSA to GM is reported to have outlined the main details of the news Super Cruise system. The details of the system were not due to be officially unveiled until early 2017.

Unlike current cruise controls which require the driver’s hands to be on the wheel at all times, when the new GM Super Cruise feature is activated it will enable the car to be driven in cruise control mode without the driver’s hands on the steering wheel.

Regulated By Facial Recognition.

The semi semi-autonomous Super Cruise feature is the very latest technological development that is implementing GM’s public plans to allow drivers on highways to let the vehicle take over driving itself.

The Super Cruise feature will use facial recognition to check that the driver is still alert and in control of the situation when their hands are not on the steering wheel. If the advanced software detects that the driver is not paying attention (e.g falling asleep), the system will engage a number of safety measures. These measures will include:

• A series of alerts / alarms to get the driver’s attention. These are reported to include a red light, a vibrating seat, and the playing of a recorded message to the driver.
• Attempts to communicate with the driver (on the assumption of e.g. a medical emergency) using GM’s OnStar (human) driver assistance.
• If the driver doesn’t take over after the alerts, the car will be slowed down (safely) and the hazard lights will go on.
• If there is no response from the driver the vehicle will be stopped.

Presumably, these safety measures will all be activated and will take place in short time frame.

Regulated By the Road Conditions.

The Super Cruise system will of course also take account of the conditions outside of the car and if it detects excessive twists and bends in the road, it will hand control back to the driver.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

This is another example of how advanced security-based technology and biometrics such as facial recognition are moving into the mainstream. It’s a move towards autonomous features in cars (think of the recent Uber driverless car trial and the autonomous public vehicles tests in Milton Keynes)

Many transport modes are now asking us to place more of our trust in technology. If you are a frequent business car traveller, you may already use a cruise control and you may be excited by this move to the next generation.

Critics could say that whereas the complete autonomous vehicles in Milton Keynes could reduce traffic to the city centre, semi-autonomous features in individual vehicles may bring few benefits to anyone other than the driver / owner. It also remains to be seen if they provide real safety benefits or whether in fact they increase risks to other drivers.

A research alliance between Google’s AI company DeepMind and Oxford University is reported to have developed a new AI system that can read lips better than humans.

Better Than a Trained Lip Reading Professional?

According to a recent scientific paper about the project, the newly developed AI system known as Watch, Listen and Spell (WLAS) can read human lips to the point where it is able to interpret more words than a trained lip reading professional. When tested against each other using 200 randomly selected BBC television video clips, the WLAS system was recorded as having a lip reading accuracy rate of 46.8%, whereas the human lip reading professional only managed a 12.4% accuracy rate.

Trained Using Videos.

The AI WLAS system was able to achieve such impressive accuracy rates because it was reportedly ‘trained’ using a 118,000 sentence LRS dataset (the equivalent of 17,500 words) combined with 5,000 hours of BBC video footage. In order for the system to ‘get the hang of’ learning to lip read from scratch, the BBC videos were reportedly prepared using machine learning algorithms.

One other useful application of AI during the experiment was to learn to re-align the video and audio when they went out of sync!

Previous Success.

The success of the WLAS system was preceded by a lip reading system called LipNet, also tested by Oxford University, which also showed a much higher accuracy level than a human expert. This system, however, worked on a much smaller data set.

How Useful Is It?

Some technical commentators have questioned show useful the development of this new system is and where / how it could be deployed in the real world.

Obvious suggestions have included providing better support for those with impaired hearing, and improving the quality of live subtitles for TV.

Other slightly less obvious suggested applications of the system include adding the system to a virtual assistant and / or phone camera to help people to lip read, perhaps in crowded or particularly noisy environments.

Teaching Robots To Dream.

Not content with achieving these surprisingly good results with WLAS, Google’s DeepMind is also reported to be in the process of pioneering a new technology which allows robots to dream in order to improve their rate of learning.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

The already staggering advances in AI have meant that companies have been able to use AI to add value to services and free up human members of staff in many situations.

In the IT world, there are virtual assistants, chat bots, and recently the addition of the new toolkit called ‘Microsoft Team’ to Office 365. There still remains an almost unlimited number of possible opportunities for AI to be used in a value-adding, time and labour saving way in all industries, and AI add-ons to elements of businesses could soon be the source of important competitive advantages in the marketplace.

It could also herald the beginning of AI being used for industrial espionage … reading what you say through a pair of binoculars used to be the fantasy of Frederick Forsyth type novels … so watch this space!

The proliferation of so-called ‘fake news’ and its apparent ability to influence the outcome of globally important events such as the recent U.S election have meant that Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg has been moved to publicly announce how Facebook intends to tackle the problem in future.

What Is Fake News?

As the name suggests, fake news involves the publishing / distribution of news that contains spurious reporting and / or varying degrees and levels of accuracy, bias and influence.

One of the key factors in the success of ‘fake news’ in influencing people is whether or not the recipient is motivated, able or has learned to successfully evaluate sources’ reliability e.g. based upon whether they’re named, independent, well-informed or authoritative. For example, a recent study by Stamford University of nearly 8,000 students (from grammar school through college) showed that 82% couldn’t distinguish between an ad labelled as sponsored content and a real news story on a website.

This could mean that the younger generations i.e. those who rely most heavily upon the use of social media, and who appear not to be adept at, willing or able to check the source of ‘news’ are therefore at risk of being influenced by all manner of ‘players’ … commercial, political and others.

Why Fake News?

The fact is that well crafted and ‘believable’ fake news is more likely to be shared, and therefore it has at least commercial value. Fake news websites can attract a lot of interest and can therefore make a lot of money through advertising.

The Challenge For Facebook.

Facebook is in the unprecedented position of having huge power and influence across the globe on how we think, act, feel, and on how / what we prefer and consume.

Recent complaints that fake news featured on Facebook during the recent U.S. presidential election may have influenced the outcome, and influenced it in a direction that many Americans perceive to be the wrong direction, have brought calls for action. Facebook also has to tread a fine line between discouraging ‘fake’ news while encouraging the sharing of a wide range of opinions.

Facebook’s Plans To Combat Fake News.

Mark Zuckerberg has announced that Facebook have been working on the challenges for some time and that they are developing methods for stronger detection and verification as regards news distributed across the network.

Facebook is also reported to be considering providing warning labels on fake content, and finding ways to prevent fake news sites from making money through advertising on its network.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Some people, organisations and businesses clearly see Facebook’s position and power and reach as an opportunity to take advantage of human habits and vulnerabilities where the use of fake news is concerned.

There are of course many moral and ethical questions surrounding this. One advantage of being in business is that it tends to encourage you to be more aware of influence and motivations in commercial messages, and the Facebook / U.S. election dilemma should remind us all that it is important to think about and check the sources of ‘facts’ involved in information that is being used to help make important business decisions.

A push-button door hacking demonstration at the Kiwicon hacking event in Wellington, New Zealand last Friday gave 2 of the featured hackers what can only be described as a ‘real’ shock in front of a crowd of 2,000 onlookers.

Alive and Well.

The 2 men involved in the incident were conducting the live demonstration and testing of a device which was intended to be able to wirelessly exploit door-opening push buttons. Both men survived the receipt of an electric shock. The audience of technology and hacking enthusiasts were reported to have laughed at the potentially dangerous and very public hacking fail.

About The Device.

The device that the hackers were demonstrating at the Kiwicon event was a box-shaped prototype containing a very strong electromagnet. The device was designed to enable a person to activate the push button controls on secure doors in e.g. office buildings from the outside, thereby giving easy, unauthorised access.

The design of the door-hacking device was a re-work of a previous test device which used a combination of an electromagnetic interference fuzzer fed by a scripting language, and augmented with a microphone.

At the heart of the proto-type door opener are a number of (car) ignition coils which are used to generate very high voltage, which is in turn intended to generate a spark that, using the air as a conductor, can jump a gap and in theory touch an exit button on automatic door.

What Went Wrong During the Demonstration?

According to the 2 hackers conducting the demonstration, instead of hitting the button the current passed through one of the men. The heat generated in the device during the experiment also melted a motor driver and some solder. The effect of the powerful electromagnet used in the device is also thought to have been responsible for stopping one of the hacker’s mobile phones from working.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Although in this case the hackers were out in the open at an event, and the hack was unsuccessful, it does highlight some important security concerns for businesses, particularly around automatic access, online and data storage systems.

It does seem that a hacker with the will, the determination, and some ingenuity can find their way around many so-called sophisticated and secure systems, and that there is a community of hackers and cyber criminals that the information can be shared with.

It has never been more important therefore for businesses to stay on top of all aspects of online and automated security and to make sure that Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity plans are in place should systems be breached.