Silicon Valley versus the homeless. The city deployed artificial intelligence in the fight

In this way, in the Californian city, you can check parked cars in the bus lanes and potholes on the roads. The leader of an American city now promises artificial intelligence to detect vehicles with people in them. But for now, it was only in test mode, according to the British newspaper The Guardian.

At the moment, a special vehicle goes out to the streets of San Jose every week, mainly to the city district with village 10. There, too, homeless people often gather. That is also why there is often a special parking lot for motorhomes, which are used for the needs of long-term housing.

Homelessness is a fueling problem in San Jose. The housing market there is among the least affordable in the United States. In order for a tenant to be able to afford his own one-room apartment, he would have to spend roughly 96 thousand US dollars per year (about 2.3 million crowns). That’s why the number of homeless people in San Jose is growing every year. In 2009, there were approximately 4,200 of them, this year the number increased by 2 thousand.

The system is gradually being improved

The city then sent the harvested material to the technology company involved in the project. companies such as Ash Sensors, Sensen.AI, Xloop Digital, Blue Dome Technologies or CityRover are among you. The whole project is currently in the testing phase and the city has not set a final date when it should be evaluated. However, artificial intelligence models are gradually being improved and led by the Californian city in the future, the importance of this software will increase.

In the case of you, software for detecting lost cats and dogs or overgrown trees that threaten houses or roads are different. For now, however, the main goal is to recognize cars and tents on streets where people walk for a long time.

The software monitors whether the windows in the vehicle are covered. Whether there is garbage around it or you, to the project Ken Salsman, technology editor of the company Ash Sensors, who was involved in the project. However, he added to The Guardian that for the sleep to be recognized, it would be necessary to scan streets.

Privacy concerns

Artificial intelligence is precisely designed to preserve privacy. This is also why you end up with smudged faces or identification marks. Clem does not identify people, but reveals the group in which homeless people are, says Khaled Tawfik, editor of the IT department in the city of San Jose.

In the future, special software could also create an effective way for the residents of the city. The police officer there very often has to deal with illegal dumps, graffiti, the danger of termites or the unauthorized killing of the homeless. Thanks to artificial intelligence, these events could happen faster in the future.