St. Louis Is Grappling With Artificial Intelligence's Promise And Potential Peril

[Sherman A1]

Tinus Le Roux’s company, FanCam, takes high-resolution photos of crowds having fun. That might be at Busch Stadium, where FanCam is installed, or on Market Street, where FanCam set up its technology to capture Blues fans celebrating after the Stanley Cup victory.

As photos, they’re a fun souvenir. But paired with artificial intelligence, they’re something more: a tool that gives professional sports teams a much more detailed look at who’s in the audience, including their estimated age and gender. The idea, he explained Thursday on St. Louis on the Air, “is to help teams understand their fans a bit better … understand when they’re leaving their seats, what merchandise are they wearing?”

Now that the pandemic has made crowd size a matter of public health, Le Roux noted that FanCam can help teams tell whether the audience has swelled past 25% capacity — or how many patrons are wearing masks.

But for all the technology’s power, Le Roux believes in limits. He explained that he is not interested in technology that would allow him to identify individuals in the crowd.

https://news.stlpublicradio.org/show/st-louis-on-the-air/2020-10-14/thursday-artificial-intelligence-shows-both-promise-and-peril

[SWBTATTReg]

1. Just wait, unintended consequences happen w/ every new technology. Crowd monitoring is a biggie,

and I suspect that this will happen before long, far sooner than folks think possible.