Is Artificial Intelligence the Answer to Home Security
Facial recognition, geofencing, and artificial intelligence (AI) enabled cameras, are some of the ways that these new systems can identify intruders faster than current methods. Although AI still has flaws to iron out, it seems it is poised to have a major impact on the home security industry.
Criticisms of AI for home security include the possible abuse of these state of the art systems, raising concerns about privacy, the collection of personal data, and racial bias. But these cutting-edge AI firms are diligently working at eliminating these potential problem areas, while providing better service at lower prices.
AI, for example, can see things faster than the current systems that rely on humans who may not be paying attention. If someone enters the property, the cameras will alert a command center. If someone loiters too long at the entrance to an estate, the system will send an alert to the monitoring center which will respond with a tailored warning like, “You in the blue shirt, please leave.”
“ We put cameras to create a perimeter with no dead zones,” said Ken Young, chief executive of Edgeworth Security, a consulting firm from Pittsburgh.
Mr. Young says AI can distinguish between movement in and out of the property, and the facial recognition technology can distinguish between regular visitors, like gardeners and house cleaners and strangers.
Many multimillion-dollar homes are ill equipped from a security perspective. According to a 2011 study by the Justice Department, 94 to 98 percent of burglar alarms were false, deeming the systems extremely unreliable.
But these advanced systems are not just for private estates. Tom Gallagher, president of DSL Construction which owns 26 residential building in Los Angeles with more than 1400 apartments advises that, “Over the years it just became increasingly clear to me that the quality of the guards…were horrible.” After attempting and failing to start his own security firm, Mr. Gallager installed AI as another layer of security, in addition to the guards in all of his properties. He says that the AI systems were more reliable. “We had an incident that the cameras picked up. Where was the guard? He was sleeping….”
Some in the AI industry promote its ability to anticipate risks. Thomas Tull, the chief executive of Tulco which owns Edgeworth, gave an example of a worker in one client’s home who posted a picture of it on the internet; the Edgeworth security system flagged the photo. In another incident, someone’s compound was detected on the dark web.
Most security consultants, however, still recommend a layered approach that could include artificial intelligence and human assets. “The lack of human involvement removes the empathetic component from the equation,” according to Illah Nourbakhsh, the K&L Gates Professor of Ethics at Carnegie Mellon University’s Create Lab. “If you keep humans in the loop and use these systems, you get the best of all worlds.”
A second caveat with the new AI systems is price. The installed systems can cost about $20,000 dollars for eight cameras on a small property and rise to more than $600,000 for large estates. Additionally, monitoring costs $8 to $12 dollars an hour.