A system powered by artificial intelligence (AI) mistakenly identified a high school student’s Doritos bag as a firearm, prompting local authorities to be notified that the student was armed.
Taki Allen was enjoying snacks with friends outside Kenwood High School in Baltimore on Monday night when an armed police officer approached her.
“Initially, I was unsure of their intentions until they started approaching me with weapons drawn, ordering me to ‘Get on the ground,’ and I thought, ‘What is happening?'” Allen recounted to WBAL-TV 11 News.
Allen stated that they forced him to his knees, handcuffed him, and conducted a search but found nothing. They then showed her the image that triggered the alarm.
“I was just holding a bag of Doritos, and they mentioned it resembled a gun because it had two hands with a finger protruding,” Allen explained.
Last year, high schools in Baltimore County began using a gun detection system that leverages AI and school cameras to identify potential weapons. If anything suspicious is detected, both the school and police are notified.
Baltimore County police informed the media: “Officers from Essex Precinct 11 responded to Kenwood High School after a report of an individual carrying a weapon. Upon arrival, they searched the individual and confirmed that he did not possess a weapon.”
“Nobody wants their child to experience this. No one wants such incidents to occur,” said Allen’s grandfather, Lamont Davis, to the news station.
Broken bones often need a material to fill the void
Sopone Nawoot/Alamy
Researchers have discovered that with slight modifications, hot glue guns, typically used in crafting, can effectively and affordably mend damaged bones.
While bones can often heal themselves after minor injuries, serious trauma or tumor removal may leave cavities that require a synthetic plug to stimulate bone cell growth.
Although 3D printing can create tailored scaffolding to fill these gaps, the method necessitates scanning and remote fabrication, taking at least a week. While this pre-planned approach works for worn joints, it’s unfeasible for emergency surgeries.
To tackle this issue, John Seung Lee from Sungkyunkwan University in Korea and his team have created a solution that can be employed immediately during a single procedure.
They modified hot glue guns to lower their operating temperature from above 100°C to approximately 60°C and developed biological adhesive materials composed of hydroxyapatite (which makes up 50% of natural bone) and a biodegradable thermoplastic known as polycaprolactone.
During surgery, surgeons can utilize hot glue guns to rapidly fill bone voids, enabling bone cells to access these gaps and ultimately heal the injuries permanently over time.
“It’s essentially created from a standard hot glue gun,” Lee explains. “It significantly reduces time and costs.”
Lee and his colleagues assessed the glue gun’s effectiveness by repairing a 1 cm gap in a rabbit’s femur. Twelve weeks later, samples showed no complications or signs of separation between the adhesive and the bone, with bone mass being more than double that of control animals treated with traditional cement.
Furthermore, researchers found that two antibacterial agents can be integrated into the filaments to decrease infection risk, releasing the drugs gradually to the surgical site over several weeks.
Benjamin Olivere from the University of Nottingham in the UK is investigating 3D-printed scaffolds for bone repair but expresses skepticism, suggesting hot glue guns might become a more practical alternative compared to slower scanning and printing methods.
“Is it an intriguing idea? Absolutely. Is it feasible? Yes. Do I believe it’s plausible? Yes,” he states. “However, the practical application may be a different matter.”
Officials in New York City revealed a pilot program on Thursday to implement handheld gun scanners in the subway system to enhance safety and reduce violence underground.
Mayor Eric Adams mentioned that the scanners will be set up at specific stations after a 90-day waiting period mandated by law.
“Ensuring the safety of New Yorkers in the subway system and preserving their trust in the system is crucial for keeping New York the safest metropolis in America,” Adams stated. The announcement also included plans to deploy extra outreach personnel to assist individuals with mental health issues living in the system.
Adams mentioned that authorities will seek companies with expertise in weapons detection technology, and eventually install the scanners in select subway stations to assess their effectiveness further.
The scanner, showcased by Mr. Adams and law enforcement officials at a news conference in Lower Manhattan, was developed by Evolv, a publicly traded company facing allegations of manipulating software test results to exaggerate the scanner’s effectiveness. The company is currently under investigation by U.S. trade regulators and financial regulators.
Evolv’s CEO, Peter George, described the AI-enabled scanner as utilizing “a secure ultra-low frequency electromagnetic field and advanced sensors for concealed weapons detection.”
Jerome Greco, overseeing attorney for the Legal Aid Society’s digital forensics division, cautioned that gun detection systems may trigger false alarms and cause unnecessary panic.
City officials have not disclosed the specific locations where the scanners will be deployed. A demonstration at the Fulton Street station showed the device beeping when an officer with a holstered gun passed, but not reacting to an officer with a cell phone or other electronic device. No false alarms were noted.
While violent incidents in the city’s subways are infrequent, recent high-profile shootings have highlighted safety concerns. The city recorded five murders in the subway system last year, a decrease from the previous year. The installation of the scanners follows a recent fatal accident at an East Harlem subway station, reinforcing the urgency of subway safety measures.
SNine years ago today, Joaquin Oliver was murdered in the hallway outside his Florida classroom. He was one of 17 students and staff killed in America's deadliest high school shooting. On Wednesday, lawmakers in Washington, D.C., will hear his voice recreated by artificial intelligence on the phone, asking them why they haven't done more about the gun violence epidemic.
“It's been six years and you haven't done anything. You can't stop the shootings that have happened since then,” he said of the Valentine's Day 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland. A message from Oliver, who was 17 at the time of his tragic death, reads:
“I came back today because my parents used AI to recreate my voice and call you. Other victims like me have also received countless calls demanding action. How many calls will it take to care? How many dead voices will I hear before I finally hear it?”
Oliver is one of six people who lost their lives to firearms, and his voice is about to be heard again. He's issuing a call to action in an innovative online gun reform campaign launched today. shot line.
Parkland victim Joaquin Oliver
“How many dead voices will we hear before we finally hear it?”
Sorry, your browser does not support audio. However, you can download and listen here $https://uploads.guim.co.uk/2024/02/13/TheShotline_AI_JoaquinOliver_Call_to_Congress.mp3
A project by two activist groups formed in the wake of the Parkland shooting and creative communications agency MullenLowe, it leverages AI technology to generate direct messages from shooting victims themselves.
The voices are “trained” using deep machine learning from audio clips provided by family members. The resulting recordings are ready to go directly to the people in Congress who have the power to take action against gun violence. Website visitors enter their zip code and choose the message they want to send to their elected representatives.
“We all hear children's voices in our heads. Why don't lawmakers need to hear them too?” said Mike Song, whose 15-year-old son Ethan died in an accident involving a missing gun.
Ethan's message, like Oliver's, is straightforward. “Children like me die every day. It's time to act. It's time to pass laws that protect children from unsafe guns. At the end of the day, it's about helping people. It’s your job to pass responsible gun control, or we’ll find someone to do it.”
Other voices recreated for the Shotline project include that of 10-year-old Ujiyah Garcia, a victim of the 2022 Uvalde Elementary School shooting in Texas. Akira DaSilva, 23, was killed in the 2018 Waffle House shooting in Tennessee. Jaycee Webster, 20, was shot and killed by an intruder in his Maryland home in 2017. And in 2014, Mike Bohan committed suicide with a gun he could buy in 15 minutes.
Vaughn's death, who suffered from depression, sparked a movement that led to passage of Maryland's first Red Flag gun control.
Six years after Oliver's murder, it is by design that Oliver's voice is at the forefront of the campaign. One of his two groups behind this effort is march for our livean activist group formed by Stoneman Douglas students that sparked global protests after Parkland.
The Shotline campaign uses AI to generate audio messages from gun violence victims. Photo: shot line
the other one is, Change references, was founded by the teenager's parents, Manny and Patricia Oliver. They have been relentlessly advocating for gun reform since his son was murdered.
“We wanted this to be a powerful message,” Patricia Oliver said. “Joaquin has his own energy, his own image, and that's what keeps him alive. I'm so proud of Joaquin, he's the driving force that drives us forward.”
She admits the process of recreating her son's voice for 56 seconds was mentally taxing. The Olivers searched their phones and computers for videos containing Joaquin's statements and asked her sister Andrea, other relatives and girlfriend Tori to do the same.
“It was difficult to make out his exact voice because of the noise in the background,” she said. “In one video, he was in the pool and we were talking and the sound of the water was distracting.”
Eventually, we assembled enough clips for our engineers to work with, and after a long period of fine-tuning, we received the final “draft.”
“When I played it, it was incredibly shocking and a lot of different emotions came up. We had been listening to videos of Joaquín talking about the past, and now he's in a situation where he is today, very emotional. We talk about recent things,” she said.
“I know this is just a fantasy and not the truth. But in that moment, you forget what you're listening to, why you're listening, and he just says, 'Hello, Mom, how are you?' I just hope from the bottom of my heart that you just say, “?”. once again. “
Ethan's mother, Christine Song, said she felt the same painful emotions when she heard her son “talk” again six years after his death.
“It brings you back to that day, the last words your child said to you before leaving your life,” she said.
“Honestly, I just sat there and sobbed, because I knew he would never come back. But the Olivers, and my husband, and people like us all have one thing in common: What we're saying is that we go out every day and fight for respect for our children, and we're actually fighting for your children and grandchildren.”
The Songs are pressuring federal lawmakers to pass the Connecticut bill. ethan's lawrequires safe storage of firearms in the home.
“We have promised that we will not stop until we can create a cultural shift in this country where gun owners make safe storage of their weapons second nature,” said Kristen Song. Ta. “You might think that's enough because the coffins of our dead children are piling up, but when it comes to Republicans in Congress, they just don't listen.”
To create voice and calls, MullenLowe talking baby For E*Trade's Super Bowl commercial, we partnered with AI specialist Edisen, with teams in the US and Sweden working on the project.
Snippets of audio “trained” on speech patterns and tonality were fed through Eleven Labs’ generative voice AI platform, and the reconstructed voices generated voice calls from text-to-speech scripts.
“There's a lot of talk about AI right now, but this is a beautiful example of what AI can actually achieve, and a very human achievement,” says Mirko, AI creative designer at Stockholm-based Edisen.・Mr. Lempert said.
“This project was very moving and showed me how different our world is, because in my country we are not exposed to it.” [gun violence] That's the situation. That was a wake-up call. ”
Last week, the Federal Communications Commission banned robocalls using AI-generated voices after Joe Biden's voice was imitated in a fake phone call to voters in New Hampshire.
MullenLowe said Shotline calls are exempt because they are not auto-dialed, are made to a landline and are provided with a callback number.
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