Tag: Artificial Intelligence

We have already seen in China what an authoritarian government can do with this kind of technology. Fortunately South Korea is not an authoritarian government, but it doesn’t mean that someone in government would not be tempted to misuse this technology:

Controversy is arising over a city’s pilot project to combine AI-based facial recognition technology with thousands of surveillance cameras installed in the city to use in the contact tracing for COVID-19 patients. 

While the city government expects that the new system will help carry out swifter and more accurate epidemiological investigations, civic groups have expressed concerns over breaches of privacy and infringements of the personal information of infected people. 

Bucheon City Government in Gyeonggi Province is set to launch the project next month with funding from the Ministry of Science ICT. The local government received 1.6 billion won from the ministry, and allocated its own budget of 500 million won. 

As one of the most populated cities in the metropolitan area with more than 800,000 residents, Bucheon has the highest density of CCTV surveillance cameras in the country, according to city officials. With nearly 10,000 installed, there are 123 cameras per square kilometer. 

“The pilot project, if launched successfully, will drastically reduce the time and resources needed for the contact tracing of COVID-19 patients,” a city official in the Smart City Division, who is in charge of the project, told The Korea Times. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

The future is here and now even the convenience store clerk may become obsolete:

According to Bloomberg, Amazon said it will increase the number of its smart stores to nearly 3,000 across the nation by 2021. This also led GS Retail to launch the first cashierless convenience store here in Sept. 2018 in Magok, western Seoul. Following this, other local retail giants have opened smart stores adopting hi-tech payment systems.

The most prominent example is the GS25 store that opened on the 20th floor of Eulji Twin Tower in Jung-gu, central Seoul, two weeks ago.

There are over 34 smart cameras installed in the store with some 300 weight sensors that all connect to an artificial intelligence (AI) system, which plays the cashier role. 

Cameras watch customers’ behavior and their movement around the store while sensors detect which items they have picked. When a customer finishes shopping, they can just walk out of the store and the payment is processed automatically through a mobile application. 

Despite the convenience, customers are expressing mixed feelings about cashierless stores.

“This is so cool. I don’t have to wait in the queue and I can just grab and go without taking my wallet out of my pocket,” said 31-year-old nurse Lee Jung-soo. “Sometimes I felt sorry for people behind me waiting for me to pay at the convenience store but this new automatic payment system allows me to walk out without stopping.”

However, 35-year-old office worker Kim Jong-bum expressed his discomfort over the move, saying the system could lead to problems involving privacy protection.

“Think about it. Cameras watching you everywhere, anytime. This AI program will first be adopted to convenience stores, then to restaurants and clothing shops. It is only a matter of time until they all connect to put you under surveillance,” Kim said.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

All this means is that Korea’s domestically developed AI is not as smart as Google’s yet:

Korea’s all-time Go master Lee Se-dol beat won a game against an opponent powered by a locally developed artificial intelligence program in Seoul, Wednesday, three years after his historic match with Google’s AlphaGo in 2016.

Lee won the first round of the match against HanDol, a program developed by NHN Entertainment Corp. Two more games are scheduled for today and Friday. 

Go, known as baduk in Korean, is a strategy game originated in China 3,000 years ago. 

In the 2016 match, Lee beat Google AlphaGo’s DeepMind in one out of five matches. In November, the 36-year-old announced his resignation, saying the life of a Go master would be meaningless unless he can beat the AI. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

Recently on PBS Frontline they actually featured Lee Se-dol taking on the A.I. computer and it was actually fascinating to watch. That is still the only time a human has beat an A.I. at the game Go:

South Korean Go master Lee Se-dol, who retired from professional Go competition last week after gaining worldwide fame in 2016 as the only human to defeat the artificial intelligence (AI) Go player AlphaGo, said his retirement was primarily motivated by the invincibility of AI Go programs.

“With the debut of AI in Go games, I’ve realized that I’m not at the top even if I become the number one through frantic efforts,” said Lee.

“Even if I become the number one, there is an entity that cannot be defeated,” he said in an interview with Yonhap News Agency in Seoul on Monday.

AlphaGo, built by Google’s DeepMind Technologies, won four of its five matches against Lee in March 2016, but Lee’s sole win in Game 4 remains the only time a human has beaten the AI player.

Reflecting on the historic Game 4 on March 13, 2016, Lee attributed his win to a bug in the AlphaGo program.

In the game, Lee’s unexpected move at white 78 developed a white wedge between blacks at the center. The apparently embarrassed AlphaGo responded poorly on move 79, suddenly turning the game in Lee’s favor. AlphaGo then declared its surrender by displaying a “resign” message on the computer screen.

Lee’s white 78 is still praised as a “brilliant, divine” move that offered a ray of hope to humans frustrated by AIs.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.