A city in California is using AI to identify homeless encampments

Illustration by The Guardian

San Jose, a city in the heart of Silicon Valley, has launched an unprecedented experiment to use artificial intelligence to detect tent camps and cars housing homeless people.

Here's What We Know

Starting last July, San Jose authorities invited tech companies to install cameras on a municipal vehicle travelling through one of the city's neighbourhoods. The collected footage of streets and public spaces is used to train computer vision algorithms to recognise tents, residential cars and other unwanted objects.

Companies like Ash Sensors, Sensen.AI, Xloop Digital, Blue Dome Technologies and CityRover are participating in the experiment. Officials expect the AI technology to help respond more effectively to citizen complaints related to illegal homeless encampments and junkyards.

As the algorithms improve, authorities say, their capabilities could be expanded to find lost animals, parking violations and other tasks. In doing so, they say the system will not identify people or violate their privacy.

The concern is that the accumulated data on detected encampments could be used to evict and harass homeless people. In San Jose, the problem is growing amid a shortage of affordable housing and overcrowded shelters.

Representatives of homeless rights organisations fear that the introduction of AI systems will only exacerbate the problem, viewing the homeless as a kind of "rubbish" that needs to be taken off the streets. They urge San Jose authorities to focus on addressing the root causes of the housing crisis.

Source: The Guardian