Northamptonshire
Essex police pause facial recognition camera use after study finds racial bias
Academics discover black people'significantly more likely' to be identified when compared with other ethnic groups Essex police have paused the use of live facial recognition (LFR) technology after a study found cameras were significantly more likely to target black people than people of other ethnicities. The move to suspend use of the AI-enabled systems was revealed by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), which regulates the use of the technology deployed so far by at least 13 police forces in London, south and north Wales, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Hampshire, Bedfordshire, Suffolk, Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, Surrey and Sussex. The ICO said Essex police had paused LFR deployments "after identifying potential accuracy and bias risks" and warned other forces to have mitigations in place. LFR systems are either mounted to fixed locations or deployed in vans. In January, the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, announced the number of LFR vans would increase five-fold, with 50 available to every police force in England and Wales. Essex commissioned University of Cambridge academics to conduct a study, which involved 188 actors walking past cameras being actively deployed from marked police vans in Chelmsford.
Secret warehouse guards lost world of treasures found on HS2 route
Treasures unearthed by hundreds of archaeologists so far during work on the controversial planned HS2 train line have been shown exclusively to the BBC. The 450,000 objects, which are being held in a secret warehouse, include a possible Roman gladiator's tag, a hand axe that may be more than 40,000 years old and 19th Century gold dentures. It is an unprecedented amount and array of items, which will yield new insights into Britain's past, says the Centre for British Archaeology. Major building developments in the UK need land to be assessed by archaeologists as part of the planning process, to protect heritage sites. Since 2018 around 1,000 archaeologists have been involved in 60 digs along the route HS2 is set to take between London to Birmingham.
EU investigates Elon Musk's X over Grok AI sexual deepfakes
EU investigates Elon Musk's X over Grok AI sexual deepfakes The European Commission has launched an investigation into Elon Musk's X over concerns its AI tool Grok was used to create sexualised images of real people. It follows a similar announcement in January from the UK watchdog Ofcom. Regina Doherty, a member of the European parliament representing Ireland, said the Commission would assess whether manipulated sexually explicit images have been shown to users in the EU. A previous statement from X's Safety account said the social media platform had stopped Grok from digitally altering pictures of people to remove their clothing in jurisdictions where such content is illegal. But campaigners and victims said the ability to generate sexually explicit pictures using the tool should have never happened in the first place, and Ofcom said its investigation would remain ongoing.
Rare Celtic coin found by metal detectorist
The piece of Iron Age history is 33 percent gold and headed to auction. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. An ancient Celtic coin discovered in a field in northeast England could fetch over $5,000. A metal detectorist in Lelley, East Yorkshire, discovered the gold coin that dates back to about 50 to 10 BCE (during the Iron Age). According to David Duggleby Auctioneers in Scarborough, the coin is a variant of a Corieltauvi tribe gold stater .
Britain will be battered by giant HAILSTONES thanks to climate change: Huge ice balls 'could damage aircraft and properties', study warns
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Bridget Phillipson eyes AI's potential to free up teachers' time
AI tools will soon be in use in classrooms across England, but the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, has one big question she wants answered: will they save time? Attending a Department for Education-sponsored hackathon in central London last week, Phillipson listened as developers explained how their tools could compile pupil reports, improve writing samples and even assess the quality of soldering done by trainee electrical engineers. After listening to one developer extol their AI writing analysis tool as "superhuman", able to aggregate all the writing a pupil had ever done, Phillipson asked bluntly: "Do you know how much time it will have saved?" That will be our next step, the developer admitted, less confidently. In an interview with the Guardian, Phillipson said her interest in AI was less futuristic and more practical.
Advancing Crime Linkage Analysis with Machine Learning: A Comprehensive Review and Framework for Data-Driven Approaches
Lima, Vinicius, Karabiyik, Umit
Crime linkage is the process of analyzing criminal behavior data to determine whether a pair or group of crime cases are connected or belong to a series of offenses. This domain has been extensively studied by researchers in sociology, psychology, and statistics. More recently, it has drawn interest from computer scientists, especially with advances in artificial intelligence. Despite this, the literature indicates that work in this latter discipline is still in its early stages. This study aims to understand the challenges faced by machine learning approaches in crime linkage and to support foundational knowledge for future data-driven methods. To achieve this goal, we conducted a comprehensive survey of the main literature on the topic and developed a general framework for crime linkage processes, thoroughly describing each step. Our goal was to unify insights from diverse fields into a shared terminology to enhance the research landscape for those intrigued by this subject.
Hundreds go bonkers for conkers at world champs
More than 200 people have taken part in the World Conker Championships, with many competing in fancy dress. The competition took place earlier at the Shuckburgh Arms in Southwick, Northamptonshire. The event saw participants go head-to-head using conkers threaded on to string to try and smash their opponent's nut. Since its inception in 1965, the event has raised more than 400,000 for charities that support the visually impaired.PA MediaHundreds of spectators attended the event which was first held in 1965 One man wore a green inflatable Yoda headpiece, while another wore a conker-themed hat. All participants were required to follow a stringent set of rules to ensure the event was as fair as possible, which included the conkers and laces being provided by organisers.
Deep chroma compression of tone-mapped images
Milidonis, Xenios, Banterle, Francesco, Artusi, Alessandro
Acquisition of high dynamic range (HDR) images is thriving due to the increasing use of smart devices and the demand for high-quality output. Extensive research has focused on developing methods for reducing the luminance range in HDR images using conventional and deep learning-based tone mapping operators to enable accurate reproduction on conventional 8 and 10-bit digital displays. However, these methods often fail to account for pixels that may lie outside the target display's gamut, resulting in visible chromatic distortions or color clipping artifacts. Previous studies suggested that a gamut management step ensures that all pixels remain within the target gamut. However, such approaches are computationally expensive and cannot be deployed on devices with limited computational resources. We propose a generative adversarial network for fast and reliable chroma compression of HDR tone-mapped images. We design a loss function that considers the hue property of generated images to improve color accuracy, and train the model on an extensive image dataset. Quantitative experiments demonstrate that the proposed model outperforms state-of-the-art image generation and enhancement networks in color accuracy, while a subjective study suggests that the generated images are on par or superior to those produced by conventional chroma compression methods in terms of visual quality. Additionally, the model achieves real-time performance, showing promising results for deployment on devices with limited computational resources.