8 ms·

Cameras That Can Spot Shoplifters Even Before They Steal?

23 points by howard941 8y ago

tlrobinson 8y ago
And so it begins... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Minority_Report https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Minority_Report
- Leszek 8y ago
  Slippery slope arguments slip both ways: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2010-01-02 https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2010-01-02
diehunde 8y ago
...Like a scene out of the movie “Minority Report,”algorithms analyze security-camera footage and alert staff about potential thieves via a smartphone app. The goal is prevention; if the target is approached and asked if they need help, there’s a good chance the theft never happens. At least the won't try to arrest you before committing a crime like in the movie
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  Nasty consequences could still ensue. Imagine being banned from your main grocery store option because of a false positive from this system.
  - Someone1234 8y ago
    And it will happen. Every time we make an advancement someone uses it in exactly the opposite way than intended. In this case people will get too confident in the technology, and start accusing random people with a tick or other false-positive indicator.
  - Frost1x 8y ago
    As a society, we're rapidly encroaching into a deeper feudalistic structure here in the US. This is apparent in trends shown in socioeconomic structure and mobility. It's also apparent in the unrest you see in recent and current politics. At the same time, we're reaching a point with data science and sensing technologies that we've not looked at from a moral and ethical perspective at large as a society. These technologies will certainly be used by the ruling class (wealthy, powerful) for their best interests to further entrench this societal structure. As with any technology, it can also be used to serve humanity at large so the technology itself isn't bad, it's always a balancing act of how it's utilized. We, as a society, really need to begin considering moral and ethical implications of the uses of these technologies by the ruling class and decide what we want and don't want to allow. If it's left for them to decide, I can assure you, it won't be good for vast majority of us plebes/proles (citizens). Maintaining a democracy is a never-ending fight and we meager citizens currently seem to be losing the battle as technology accelerates the ruling class's grip at every turn. Heck, people on this very site are indirectly contributing to these development efforts for what now seems like a great payoff. It's easy to get wrapped up in the beauty and complexity of technology without considering its implications, especially when you're getting paid quite well (for now). You only need to look back a few decades at retrospective assessments from some of the greatest minds in the century that developed modern nuclear weapons as a guide. We need to organize and step-up our game to take back control of our government to serve us (the people), not a select few extremely wealthy and powerful folks. We need to consider moral and ethical implications of use of these technologies and enact laws with serious protections and penalties before mass abuse of technology grows more rampant.
- bilbo0s 8y ago
  >if the target is approached and asked if they need help, there’s a good chance the theft never happens... Good security would see your "target" as the "subject". The target is the guy taking advantage of the new camera prediction system by waiting for a subject of interest to enter the area before proceeding to rip you off while you're otherwise engaged. My guess is that the shoplifting rings will have a field day in any mall relying on tech like this.
  - mc32 8y ago
    Wouldn’t systems like this have the intelligence to have these known rings in their databases? Of course they can have new (unknown) recruits but that gets costly. I can have sympathy for the teenager who steals a snickers bar, ok. But these roving bands of shoplifting thieves, I hope they get caught and put out of business.
    - bilbo0s 8y ago
      >I hope they get caught and put out of business... They may be caught, but it won't be by a prediction system. I can pretty much guarantee they will be the ones taking advantage of the prediction system. These rings are very difficult to crack even by seasoned store detectives and law enforcement. I would not count on AI/ML to do what your average city detectives can't, that's just wishful thinking. If these rings get cracked, there will be some clever, human based, detective work behind the takedowns. AI/ML is just too easy to trick in all the predictable ways. It'll likely derail the opportunistic shoplifters, or less intelligent shoplifters that work alone. I don't think it will get close to disrupting these shoplifting networks though. (And in fairness, even the human police officers are easily diverted if you appeal to their biases. That's just the neuro-psychological nature of attention. No way around it in humans, just have to be aware of it and trust your hunches. If you have a hunch someone is trying to divert you, step back and take another look at the big picture.)
      - mc32 8y ago
        Are they more difficult to crack than professional card counters in Vegas who get tracked and then this info disseminated to all other venues?
marricks 8y ago
Trying to detect a crime like shoplifting beforehand seems to open the door for all sorts of biases, racial and otherwise...
- vorhp 8y ago
  So if say, old white females who wear expensive clothes are more likely to shoplift, should we ignore that?
  - ep103 8y ago
    yes?
  - anbop 8y ago
    Very droll, very droll. But US law is that even if your policy has no intended racial bias, if it ends up having one, it’s still illegal. And meat is mainly shoplifted by white women.
    - wutbrodo 8y ago
      > But US law is that even if your policy has no intended racial bias, if it ends up having one, it’s still illegal. Can you elaborate on this? As stated, it sounds not just inaccurate, but impossible: it reads like youre saying that any policy that doesn't result in a uniform (or proportional) racial ratio is illegal, which obviously isn't the case. I think you're talking about disparate impact (as a legal concept), but this is 1) IIRC likotes to certain domains, like housing or employment and 2) avoidable if the racially-skewed policy is demonstrably related to the job (in the employment case). As a trivial example, requiring a college degree for a job dramatically shifts the racial distribution of the candidate pool, and obviously isn't illegal. If the shoplifting system is found to be illegal, AIUI, it would probably be because the case is made that it's _directly_ racially biased (disparate treatment).
  - learc83 8y ago
    Yes, we should. As a society we've agreed that whatever benefits there may be from racial profiling aren't worth the harm.
ericol 8y ago
Next move: Mimicking shoplifter behaviour in order to get harassed and suit the crap out of stores.
kartikkumar 8y ago
Correlation does not imply causation. How do these AI systems account for causation? It's the fundamental issue I have with the penetration of these sorta "AI" systems in daily life: from what I understand about the basic maths, they're ultimately all seeking correlation and real-world data used to improve models seems to achieve verification, not validation. I'm guessing I'm not the only person who reads this article and experiences a visceral reaction. This is what I would call "ugly" tech.
- kmlx 8y ago
  this product is about prevention from my understanding. not about calling the thought crime police. i think it’s quite great tech, definitely a huge need in the market for this sort of prevention mechanism.
  - kartikkumar 8y ago
    The risk of falsely predicting that someone is going to shoplift, based on models that are driven by correlation, is not a problem? How is it not about policing thought? If you present physical attributes/symptoms of someone who is thinking about shoplifting (nervousness, anxiety, fidgetiness, etc., as mentioned in the article), the models can classify you are "about to shoplift". That's pretty close to thought policing if you ask me.
- doublekill 8y ago
  These systems are interested in probabilities, not in finding the causes of shoplifting. If not correlation, then what else?
  - kartikkumar 8y ago
    How is a validated chain of causation not important for these systems to arrive at ethical predictions? The causation gap for these models presents a really terrible scenario. Without causation, these models are capable of correlating things like race, gender, etc. with outcomes like shoplifting.
lwansbrough 8y ago
”These cameras act like a racist old shop keeper so you don’t have to, but it’s cool because it’s ‘artificial intelligence’ and definitely not profiling.”
- ta8347 8y ago
  The article makes no mention of racism. The article only mentions "fidgeting, restlessness and other potentially suspicious body language".
  - nonsince 8y ago
    There are two options: 1) The "signs of shoplifting" are human-designed, and so are heavily biased 2) The "signs of shoplifting" are entirely machine learning-based, meaning that they are overwhelmingly biased towards the people who actually get caught and the people who are of communities more likely to shoplift, either because of economic necessity or because of being more likely to live in areas with higher crime rates for whatever reason. Both lead to racist results without any explicit racism being required. Also in the absolute best-case scenario that this system works, all you're achieving is locking up more people stealing out of desperation for the benefit of corporations. Even that terrible situation, though, is a pipe dream compared to the reality of systems like these.
    - mc32 8y ago
      I thought most of the shoplifting damage isn’t the teenager (or senior) pocketing a snickers bar but the roving bands of professional shoplifters. These people can be caught and deterred.
      - ceejayoz 8y ago
        The professionals will likely take the time and effort to discover and exploit the holes in the AI.
        8y ago
learc83 8y ago
There is no way this doesn't end up disproportionately impacting at least some protected class. Even if it doesn't, the opacity of ML means that it's going to difficult to defend against charges that it does.
CalChris 8y ago
No, they can't.
myself248 8y ago
The software looks "for fidgeting, restlessness and other potentially suspicious body language". Great, so sociopaths will go unchallenged because the computer deems them trustworthy, and socially-anxious people will endure YET MORE intrusive encounters during what should be a simple trip to the store. "Can I help you? No, I won't go away, I don't understand this computer thing but it says I really need to stay near you while you're in the store." That'll be lovely.
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  It's gonna be fun to watch when this runs up against the ADA.
diogenescynic 8y ago
Ah we’re at the pre-crime stage of our police state. Surely this will turn out well.
parsnipsumthing 8y ago
How do they create first sample from which to "learn" without importing current bias?
kibwen 8y ago
> artificial intelligence software that hunts for potential shoplifters, using footage from security cameras for fidgeting, restlessness and other potentially suspicious body language. Isn't this survivorship bias? You can correlate suspicious mannerisms with shoplifting only because the shoplifters without suspicious mannerisms don't get caught. Has there been research into what percentage of inventory shrinkage is attributable to people who exhibit such suspicious behavior? This also leaves unanswered the question of how many people exhibit these behaviors without being shoplifters, e.g. people with social anxiety (exhibiting general nervousness), ADHD (insatiable restlessness), Tourette's (uncontrollable physical tics), or on the autism spectrum (which can compel one to conspicuously touch everything in sight).
- 49531 8y ago
  Can't wait to have loss prevention tailing me in home depot because I am having a panic attack.
gmmeyer 8y ago
This is gonna be some racist bs
Theodores 8y ago
I am not sure if many of the commenters here have experience of shoplifting, whether doing it or working in retail and therefore having to prevent what the industry calls 'shrinkage'. Some say that the neural network will be racial profiling instead of working on body language tells. However, having worked in retail and knowing the attitudes of some of my colleagues, I think I would trust a computer over some of my former workmates when it comes to having fair suspicions. The training for the neural network is simple, the known thieving incidents get traced back to the thief entering the door and doing what all thieves do when they enter the store - scope out the counter, the cameras and mirrors. It is all body language. There can be off-duty thieves who don't steal always but will be showing some of the same tells. These will be false positives. But then there are the long tail thieving situations that can not be spotted by a mere human. For example, a woman regularly stealing cat litter and pet food with every weekly shop for a family. She simply placed the items on the lower part of the shopping trolley, checked everything else out properly and conveniently forgot to pay for the 'minor items' on the lower rung. No human would have thought a normal member of society would risk reputation for the small financial gain involved. This probably started as an accidental theft one week with no 'nerves' involved. By the following week the 'OMG silly me!' routine would have been prepared for. There would be no looking at the security arrangements walking in, so very different 'tells'. Humans could not spot this, but a neural network trained on every bit of shrinkage across a vast store network might stand half a chance. If you do work in retail you actually want to deliver excellent customer service and to trust customers. So, from a point of view of wanting to do that and give customers undivided attention, I welcome our new neural network overlords.

23 points by howard941 8y ago

tlrobinson 8y ago

And so it begins... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Minority_Report https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Minority_Report

Leszek 8y ago
Slippery slope arguments slip both ways: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2010-01-02 https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2010-01-02

diehunde 8y ago

...Like a scene out of the movie “Minority Report,”algorithms analyze security-camera footage and alert staff about potential thieves via a smartphone app. The goal is prevention; if the target is approached and asked if they need help, there’s a good chance the theft never happens. At least the won't try to arrest you before committing a crime like in the movie

ceejayoz 8y ago
Nasty consequences could still ensue. Imagine being banned from your main grocery store option because of a false positive from this system.
- Someone1234 8y ago
  And it will happen. Every time we make an advancement someone uses it in exactly the opposite way than intended. In this case people will get too confident in the technology, and start accusing random people with a tick or other false-positive indicator.
- Frost1x 8y ago
  As a society, we're rapidly encroaching into a deeper feudalistic structure here in the US. This is apparent in trends shown in socioeconomic structure and mobility. It's also apparent in the unrest you see in recent and current politics. At the same time, we're reaching a point with data science and sensing technologies that we've not looked at from a moral and ethical perspective at large as a society. These technologies will certainly be used by the ruling class (wealthy, powerful) for their best interests to further entrench this societal structure. As with any technology, it can also be used to serve humanity at large so the technology itself isn't bad, it's always a balancing act of how it's utilized. We, as a society, really need to begin considering moral and ethical implications of the uses of these technologies by the ruling class and decide what we want and don't want to allow. If it's left for them to decide, I can assure you, it won't be good for vast majority of us plebes/proles (citizens). Maintaining a democracy is a never-ending fight and we meager citizens currently seem to be losing the battle as technology accelerates the ruling class's grip at every turn. Heck, people on this very site are indirectly contributing to these development efforts for what now seems like a great payoff. It's easy to get wrapped up in the beauty and complexity of technology without considering its implications, especially when you're getting paid quite well (for now). You only need to look back a few decades at retrospective assessments from some of the greatest minds in the century that developed modern nuclear weapons as a guide. We need to organize and step-up our game to take back control of our government to serve us (the people), not a select few extremely wealthy and powerful folks. We need to consider moral and ethical implications of use of these technologies and enact laws with serious protections and penalties before mass abuse of technology grows more rampant.
bilbo0s 8y ago
>if the target is approached and asked if they need help, there’s a good chance the theft never happens... Good security would see your "target" as the "subject". The target is the guy taking advantage of the new camera prediction system by waiting for a subject of interest to enter the area before proceeding to rip you off while you're otherwise engaged. My guess is that the shoplifting rings will have a field day in any mall relying on tech like this.
- mc32 8y ago
  Wouldn’t systems like this have the intelligence to have these known rings in their databases? Of course they can have new (unknown) recruits but that gets costly. I can have sympathy for the teenager who steals a snickers bar, ok. But these roving bands of shoplifting thieves, I hope they get caught and put out of business.
  - bilbo0s 8y ago
    >I hope they get caught and put out of business... They may be caught, but it won't be by a prediction system. I can pretty much guarantee they will be the ones taking advantage of the prediction system. These rings are very difficult to crack even by seasoned store detectives and law enforcement. I would not count on AI/ML to do what your average city detectives can't, that's just wishful thinking. If these rings get cracked, there will be some clever, human based, detective work behind the takedowns. AI/ML is just too easy to trick in all the predictable ways. It'll likely derail the opportunistic shoplifters, or less intelligent shoplifters that work alone. I don't think it will get close to disrupting these shoplifting networks though. (And in fairness, even the human police officers are easily diverted if you appeal to their biases. That's just the neuro-psychological nature of attention. No way around it in humans, just have to be aware of it and trust your hunches. If you have a hunch someone is trying to divert you, step back and take another look at the big picture.)
    - mc32 8y ago
      Are they more difficult to crack than professional card counters in Vegas who get tracked and then this info disseminated to all other venues?

marricks 8y ago

Trying to detect a crime like shoplifting beforehand seems to open the door for all sorts of biases, racial and otherwise...

vorhp 8y ago
So if say, old white females who wear expensive clothes are more likely to shoplift, should we ignore that?
- ep103 8y ago
  yes?
- anbop 8y ago
  Very droll, very droll. But US law is that even if your policy has no intended racial bias, if it ends up having one, it’s still illegal. And meat is mainly shoplifted by white women.
  - wutbrodo 8y ago
    > But US law is that even if your policy has no intended racial bias, if it ends up having one, it’s still illegal. Can you elaborate on this? As stated, it sounds not just inaccurate, but impossible: it reads like youre saying that any policy that doesn't result in a uniform (or proportional) racial ratio is illegal, which obviously isn't the case. I think you're talking about disparate impact (as a legal concept), but this is 1) IIRC likotes to certain domains, like housing or employment and 2) avoidable if the racially-skewed policy is demonstrably related to the job (in the employment case). As a trivial example, requiring a college degree for a job dramatically shifts the racial distribution of the candidate pool, and obviously isn't illegal. If the shoplifting system is found to be illegal, AIUI, it would probably be because the case is made that it's _directly_ racially biased (disparate treatment).
- learc83 8y ago
  Yes, we should. As a society we've agreed that whatever benefits there may be from racial profiling aren't worth the harm.

ericol 8y ago

Next move: Mimicking shoplifter behaviour in order to get harassed and suit the crap out of stores.

kartikkumar 8y ago

Correlation does not imply causation. How do these AI systems account for causation? It's the fundamental issue I have with the penetration of these sorta "AI" systems in daily life: from what I understand about the basic maths, they're ultimately all seeking correlation and real-world data used to improve models seems to achieve verification, not validation. I'm guessing I'm not the only person who reads this article and experiences a visceral reaction. This is what I would call "ugly" tech.

kmlx 8y ago
this product is about prevention from my understanding. not about calling the thought crime police. i think it’s quite great tech, definitely a huge need in the market for this sort of prevention mechanism.
- kartikkumar 8y ago
  The risk of falsely predicting that someone is going to shoplift, based on models that are driven by correlation, is not a problem? How is it not about policing thought? If you present physical attributes/symptoms of someone who is thinking about shoplifting (nervousness, anxiety, fidgetiness, etc., as mentioned in the article), the models can classify you are "about to shoplift". That's pretty close to thought policing if you ask me.
doublekill 8y ago
These systems are interested in probabilities, not in finding the causes of shoplifting. If not correlation, then what else?
- kartikkumar 8y ago
  How is a validated chain of causation not important for these systems to arrive at ethical predictions? The causation gap for these models presents a really terrible scenario. Without causation, these models are capable of correlating things like race, gender, etc. with outcomes like shoplifting.

lwansbrough 8y ago

”These cameras act like a racist old shop keeper so you don’t have to, but it’s cool because it’s ‘artificial intelligence’ and definitely not profiling.”

ta8347 8y ago
The article makes no mention of racism. The article only mentions "fidgeting, restlessness and other potentially suspicious body language".
- nonsince 8y ago
  There are two options: 1) The "signs of shoplifting" are human-designed, and so are heavily biased 2) The "signs of shoplifting" are entirely machine learning-based, meaning that they are overwhelmingly biased towards the people who actually get caught and the people who are of communities more likely to shoplift, either because of economic necessity or because of being more likely to live in areas with higher crime rates for whatever reason. Both lead to racist results without any explicit racism being required. Also in the absolute best-case scenario that this system works, all you're achieving is locking up more people stealing out of desperation for the benefit of corporations. Even that terrible situation, though, is a pipe dream compared to the reality of systems like these.
  - mc32 8y ago
    I thought most of the shoplifting damage isn’t the teenager (or senior) pocketing a snickers bar but the roving bands of professional shoplifters. These people can be caught and deterred.
    - ceejayoz 8y ago
      The professionals will likely take the time and effort to discover and exploit the holes in the AI.
      - 8y ago

learc83 8y ago

There is no way this doesn't end up disproportionately impacting at least some protected class. Even if it doesn't, the opacity of ML means that it's going to difficult to defend against charges that it does.

CalChris 8y ago

No, they can't.

myself248 8y ago

The software looks "for fidgeting, restlessness and other potentially suspicious body language". Great, so sociopaths will go unchallenged because the computer deems them trustworthy, and socially-anxious people will endure YET MORE intrusive encounters during what should be a simple trip to the store. "Can I help you? No, I won't go away, I don't understand this computer thing but it says I really need to stay near you while you're in the store." That'll be lovely.

ceejayoz 8y ago
It's gonna be fun to watch when this runs up against the ADA.

diogenescynic 8y ago

Ah we’re at the pre-crime stage of our police state. Surely this will turn out well.

parsnipsumthing 8y ago

How do they create first sample from which to "learn" without importing current bias?

kibwen 8y ago

> artificial intelligence software that hunts for potential shoplifters, using footage from security cameras for fidgeting, restlessness and other potentially suspicious body language. Isn't this survivorship bias? You can correlate suspicious mannerisms with shoplifting only because the shoplifters without suspicious mannerisms don't get caught. Has there been research into what percentage of inventory shrinkage is attributable to people who exhibit such suspicious behavior? This also leaves unanswered the question of how many people exhibit these behaviors without being shoplifters, e.g. people with social anxiety (exhibiting general nervousness), ADHD (insatiable restlessness), Tourette's (uncontrollable physical tics), or on the autism spectrum (which can compel one to conspicuously touch everything in sight).

49531 8y ago
Can't wait to have loss prevention tailing me in home depot because I am having a panic attack.

gmmeyer 8y ago

This is gonna be some racist bs

Theodores 8y ago

I am not sure if many of the commenters here have experience of shoplifting, whether doing it or working in retail and therefore having to prevent what the industry calls 'shrinkage'. Some say that the neural network will be racial profiling instead of working on body language tells. However, having worked in retail and knowing the attitudes of some of my colleagues, I think I would trust a computer over some of my former workmates when it comes to having fair suspicions. The training for the neural network is simple, the known thieving incidents get traced back to the thief entering the door and doing what all thieves do when they enter the store - scope out the counter, the cameras and mirrors. It is all body language. There can be off-duty thieves who don't steal always but will be showing some of the same tells. These will be false positives. But then there are the long tail thieving situations that can not be spotted by a mere human. For example, a woman regularly stealing cat litter and pet food with every weekly shop for a family. She simply placed the items on the lower part of the shopping trolley, checked everything else out properly and conveniently forgot to pay for the 'minor items' on the lower rung. No human would have thought a normal member of society would risk reputation for the small financial gain involved. This probably started as an accidental theft one week with no 'nerves' involved. By the following week the 'OMG silly me!' routine would have been prepared for. There would be no looking at the security arrangements walking in, so very different 'tells'. Humans could not spot this, but a neural network trained on every bit of shrinkage across a vast store network might stand half a chance. If you do work in retail you actually want to deliver excellent customer service and to trust customers. So, from a point of view of wanting to do that and give customers undivided attention, I welcome our new neural network overlords.