You may have watched episodes of CSI or Black Mirror where a computer flashes through thousands of images to identify a crime suspect in seconds. If so you’ll understand some of the work of BrainChip, a San Francisco-based company that is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange with $40 million in local investments.BrainChip has offered this solution for more than a year through software called Studio and a hardware accelerator. It’s currently creating the technology on a chip. Security cameras record vision that is analysed to identify people and objects, often in real time. These systems are advanced, especially in countries such as China.Chief executive Louis DiNardo says its vision system is already working at several places in France, such as the Paris Metro, the municipal police force in Paris, France’s equivalent to a department of homeland security, and Bordeaux airport. He says trials are under way in Spain, Britain, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and the US. New systems should operate early next year.READ NEXTCOMMENTAfterpay’s heyday is overJAMES KIRBYBrainChip is also adapting its artificial intelligence to detect counterfeit chips at casinos. Cameras glean the chips being played, and the system tests their authenticity. The system is also being adapted to help Safran, the French aerospace company, to verify the correct installations of equipment during the assembly of Airbus planes. A device flashes green if a wire installation is going into the correct socket, or red and sounds an alarm if assembly is incorrect.DiNardo says the human recognition system goes beyond conventional image AI. It works more like the human brain, generating “bioelectrical spikes”: other prompts apart from physical appearance that can identify someone. They call this “neuromorphic computing”. DiNardo says this approach drastically reduces machine learning time. BrainChip is also launching Akida, a system-on-a-chip that DiNardo says is the company’s future. Akida is not confined to vision analysis; to uncover malware it recognises changes to patterns such as packets of data flowing into a network. It can also be adapted to recognise trading patterns in finance. In Australia, it is earmarked for use in agriculture.-Airbnb is the latest tech-oriented firm to take a stand on a hot-button issue. The company behind the short-term rental accommodation app has banned the listing of Israeli properties in The West Bank, citing it as occupied Palestinian territory, and the listings as being on “stolen” land.There are many cases of companies turning activists, whether it be Woolworths and Coles ending free plastic bags, and Qantas and other firms’ explicit support for same-sex marriage. Like-minded consumers will reward firms that do take a stand, and while Airbnb will have many supporters of this action in the US, entering the murky world of Middle-Eastern politics takes things to a different level.Airbnb’s decision to delist about 200 properties reportedly follows years of lobbying by a diverse range of organisations. And it’s not just Palestinian groups with this concern. There are those who support the state of Israel yet oppose its occupation/annexation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, after the Six-Day War in 1967. However, Airbnb has stirred up a hornets’ nest, attracting a push-back by the Israeli government, local media, some social media outrage, and legal action.The Jerusalem Post now reports that Airbnb faces a class action in the Jerusalem District Court for discrimination based on the place people live. It also reports that Portnoy, a British-Israeli singing duo, released a song that urges a nationwide boycott of the app. However its music clip mysteriously was removed from Facebook, apparently without notice. So Facebook has been in the cross hairs too.Airbnb also faces the issue, as activist companies do, of consistency. Israeli media argues that if Airbnb opposes annexation in the West Bank, it should also do so in Crimea, and in rebel-held east Ukraine, Georgia and other regions subject to similar actions. Airbnb on its website says international regulations restrict its use in certain countries, so its services are not available in Crimea, Iran, Syria and North Korea. But it does list more than 130 homes in Donetsk and 35 homes in Lugansk in rebel-held eastern Ukraine. Should it delist those too?Last month it was reported that the UN Human Rights Council had sent letters to 150 firms warning they would be blacklisted if they continued to do business in Jewish settlements in The West Bank, and Airbnb was among them. A further factor is the Trump administration’s decision announced in June to withdraw the US from the UN Human Rights Council, so this is a highly charged issue. It will be interesting to see where things go.
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