NYPD is looking at potential AI to ‘see’ guns underground.

Metro

by the Tina Moore

Cameras equipped with artificial intelligence could alert authorities when a gun is pulled on the city’s subways — and the NYPD is eyeing the technology, officials said.

NYPD Assistant Commissioner Kaz Daughtry told NY1 there may be a way to stop the weapons in the wake of last week’s shooting on the A train in Brooklyn.

“I’m looking at technology where we can use our existing cameras in the actual subway system and integrate that with technology where we can detect weapons,” he said.

When asked by The Post about AI camera technology, the NYPD said it is “continuing to see what technology is available. The NYPD does not currently have a timeline.”

The gun-detecting AI tries to send an alert to authorities “before the first shot is fired,” said Sam Alaimo, one of the co-founders of ZeroEyes, a company that runs software in public spaces around the country.

ZeroEyes, based in the Philadelphia area, trains an algorithm to identify firearms after they are drawn.

It cannot see them stuffed into bags or tucked into belts.

The software meshes with existing digital cameras in schools, government agencies, transit systems and other institutions.

Company analysts then monitor blank screens that go live only after guns are detected, company officials said.

If the analyst believes the item is a weapon, they notify the authorities directly.

“From the moment a gun is seen in front of a security camera for about three to five seconds, the end user, school, subway, military base, shopping mall, grocery store, will get that alert,” Alamo said. .

They will also get “a picture of the shooter, the exact location of the shooter and the exact time the shooter was there.”

He said the information should make it easier for law enforcement agencies to manage after they arrive at the scene.

A top police source said the technology would be helpful, but believed criminals would find a way to thwart it.

“The reality is that once information gets out to the general public, you can be sure criminals will find a way around it,” the source said.

Another source said the city was planning to test the technology in 2023 but subway cameras were “very subpar.

Noah McClain, a professor at the University of California at Santa Clara who has studied the city’s underground, said he believes “there are very few occasions when you have a single exception to sleep stations during sleep hours.” The visual opportunity of the entity can be found.

“And so you might be able to get cameras in that type of environment to detect what looks like a handgun,” he said, “but you have a lot of false negatives, false positives. will.”