In an interview given to France Info, Valérie Pécresse, outgoing president of the Île-de-France region, raised the issue of artificial intelligence and facial recognition in public places. She announced that she was in favour of video protection in public transport coupled with the use of images by artificial intelligence. The issue of data protection and the establishment of a national debate on ethics were also mentioned.
Video protection and artificial intelligence in public transport
Incivilities and offences are common in public transport: among them are the theft of wallets by pickpockets who are often repeat offenders, or situations of harassment of women. To fight against these facts, the outgoing president of the Ile-de-France region mentioned having deployed 80,000 video protection cameras.
According to her, within six months, all these cameras will be connected to a command center of the transport police, based at the police headquarters. An initiative that she wished to set up, because she affirms that the video protection network is only useful if the actors of daily surveillance can rely on artificial intelligence to carry out video patrols.
Valérie Pécresse claims that the system can detect 30% more flagrant crimes.
Data protection and the establishment of a national debate
If the implementation of a video surveillance system guided by artificial intelligence is in the security actions carried out by the Ile-de-France region, the outgoing president says that to be able to develop this AI, it is necessary to make the law evolve in this matter:
“I ask for a national debate with a real consultation on the ethical aspects, I have asked the government for six months […] on the use of artificial intelligence, without facial recognition.”
Valérie Pécresse wanted to experiment with this technology a first time in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The AI system should have been exploited to control the wearing of the mask during the pandemic without using facial recognition. However, the Region was not able to carry out this full-scale test and was reminded of the law, which currently does not allow the use of such models for surveillance.
The president of the Ile-de-France region also asked to exploit this technology in the stations to try to analyze the face of the individuals without recording them in order to find certain people condemned or sought for terrorist acts. An activity that could rely on Edge AI.
