The question of who owns your face sounds absurd on the surface – of course you own it, it’s attached to your body after all. But in an era of facial recognition technology, in which your face can be scanned and added to databases without your knowledge or consent, the answer to that question gets a lot more complicated. Your unique composition of features might already be included in a collection used by data brokers, the government, police and advertising and tech companies to tag you in photos, match you to alleged criminal activity, sell information about you or teach neural networks how to refine facial recognition technology itself.

In fact, we have the internet and its databank of faces to thank for reaching this point. Millions upon millions of faces are now available for the scraping, which would have been difficult or impossible to achieve any other way. Computer scientists feed these images to artificial intelligence to “train” them how to recognize faces, and advances in graphics processing allow the machines to sort through them at a whiplash pace. Very little human input is needed as the neural networks use their own algorithms to decide which similarities and differences between the faces are significant, making the whole thing a bit of a mystery.

Many of us willingly make our faces available simply by using social media, lured in by apps like Snapchat and Instagram that map our features in order to apply cute filters and perform other tricks, or just by having photos of ourselves appear on the web. The convenience of features like Apple’s Face ID, which uses facial recognition to log in and pay for transactions, can also be hard to resist. But if you think avoiding the latest iPhones and apps will keep you out of these databases, you’re fooling yourself.

Surreptitious Scanning

At least 40 million surveillance cameras shoot billions of hours of footage a week in the United States alone, according to 2014 estimates. Many cities hope to fight crime by installing them in parks, intersections and sidewalks, often working in conjunction with the ones that peer out from private properties, and some are police-operated. Cities like New York, Washington, Chicago, Orlando and Los Angeles aren’t even required by law to reveal the extent of surveillance or how it’s used, and there are no enforceable rules to limit invasions of privacy or protect against abuse of surveillance systems.

Some of the cameras are equipped with real-time facial recognition technology, which can even identify moving targets. Plus, airports around the world are beginning to integrate facial recognition technology into the check-in process as well as their general surveillance systems, so you could be recognized before you even walk through the doors. You might even be scanned while attending a Taylor Swift concert as the singer’s security team searches the crowd for stalkers.

All of this means our faces can easily be recorded without our knowledge and used for remote surveillance, checked against databases of driver’s license photos and mugshots as well as photographs taken from the internet that can be tied to social media accounts, website profiles or other identifying information. Some people may learn this and think to themselves, “well, I’m not doing anything wrong, so it doesn’t affect me.” Unfortunately, that’s not necessarily true.

The Problem of False Positives

Amazon is one of the primary tech giants playing with facial recognition technology in disturbing ways, including pitching its Rekognition software to officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and filing a patent that would use doorbell cameras to document and identify people considered to be “suspicious.” How, exactly, they determine who belongs in this database is unclear, but it looks like it would at least partially be user-submitted. Let’s say you move into a new home and knock on a neighbor’s door to introduce yourself. If they have a doorbell camera, they can record your face, realize they don’t know you and sort you into the “suspicious” file, which might be shared with the entire neighborhood and Amazon at large. But algorithms also play a role, and like humans, they’re often wrong.

First of all, complete strangers can look like twins, or at least similar enough for AI to flag one in place of another. But even more troubling is the fact that facial recognition algorithms struggle to distinguish faces with dark skin. In fact, in a test by the ACLU, Amazon’s Rekognition program falsely matched 28 members of Congress with mugshots, including a disproportionate number of members of the Congressional Black Caucus. A recent MIT study also found that AI had much more trouble identifying black women than white men. It’s not hard to imagine what would happen if the software is integrated into police body cams, giving officers false “evidence” that the people before them are criminals. By the way, Rekognition is currently publicly available and wildly cheap; the ACLU test cost them just $12.33.

Your Face Can Be Hacked

When Apple debuted its Face ID for the iPhone X, the company claimed that the chance a random person could unlock your protected device is just one in a million (compared to one in 50,000 for its previous fingerprint-based Touch ID technology.) The feature projects over 30,000 invisible dots on your face to create a detailed facial map and stores that data in a “Secure Enclave” within the phone. Apple also said there’s no printed photo, video of a face or high end mask that could possibly beat the system. It was wrong. Vietnamese security firm Bkaev cracked Face ID with composite masks made of 3D-printed plastic, silicone, makeup and paper cutouts. Meanwhile, Forbes managed to break into four different Android phones using a 3D-printed head.

Far beyond simply gaining access to your devices, hackers can steal your entire face and use it for all sorts of nefarious purposes, and not just by producing a 3D-printed mask of your countenance and wearing it while committing crimes. It’s astonishingly easy to use readily available software to impersonate other people, creating convincing videos that aren’t quite what they seem. The implications of fakes like the Barack Obama video above are clear, and as the technology is refined, they could grow increasingly difficult to spot.

Maybe these “deep fakes” are funny when it’s just Nicolas Cage grafted onto the bodies of other actors in dozens of movies, but ordinary women whose faces are stolen and and used to create deceptively real-looking porn videos don’t find it so humorous. Such videos can be used to humiliate, defame and target women for abuse, whether for the creator’s own pleasure or as a form of revenge porn. So far, victims have no legal recourse; experts say deepfakes are too untraceable to investigate and exist in a legal grey area, meaning they could be protected as free speech.

There’s No Going Back Now

Facial recognition technology isn’t conceptual, theoretical or far off into the future. It’s here to stay. In China, it has already become deeply rooted in government schemes to control the populace. Two hundred million public surveillance cameras aim for an omnipresent, fully networked and fully controllable nationwide system of facial recognition working in conjunction with cell phone signals and digital financial transactions by 2020 to track citizens’ every move. By the time it’s implemented, it will also include the nation’s mandatory “social credit” ratings, which use information like how people spend their time, what they buy and the company they keep to determine whether they’re worthy of jobs, housing, travel or simply free movement. Other countries will surely follow their example, and many are well on their way.

Even people involved in creating facial recognition technology are sounding the alarms. Brian Brackeen, CEO of the firm Kairos, wants tech firms to join together to keep the technology out of the hands of law enforcement. “Time is winding down but it’s not too late for someone to take a stand and keep this from happening,” he says.

In December 2018, Microsoft urged Congress to write laws for its own facial recognition software in the year ahead, profiting from the controversial technology even as it advocates for regulation.

“We have turned down deals because we worry that the technology would be used in ways that would actually put people’s rights at risk,” said Microsoft president Brad Smith in a speech at the Brookings Institution.

As facial recognition technology continues to evolve, so will public perception around it. Have your feelings changed after learning about how it can be used?

If you’re feeling nervous already and wish you could just be invisible, check out how these 15 anti-surveillance gadgets and wearables.

We haven’t quite reached the predicted point at which drones become an intrinsic part of our daily lives, but small autonomous flying machines are learning how to do a lot more than spook people with their surveillance potential and take amazing aerial photographs. Not that they aren’t still really good at both of those. A lot of the news we read about drone advancements is a bit dystopian, warning of the looming potential for wildly invasive policing and the kind of automation that seems to threaten jobs en masse. But drones are set to accomplish some pretty cool things, too – in addition to delivering packages and piping hot food faster than ever.

Search & Rescue Missions

Applications for drones in scenarios that are just too dangerous for humans to navigate seem to grow broader with each passing day. As engineers find ways for flying drones to bear more weight, fly with more precision and use sensors for the greatest possible accuracy, the machines are able to take on ever more complex tasks. Interesting new concepts like the NET GUARD, which can fly to high altitudes to catch people jumping from tall burning buildings, aim to test the limits of drone technology – but many designs are already out there saving lives.

Lifeguards in Australia just happened to be testing a new drone called the Little Ripper when a distress call went out. Two teenagers were drowning in the surf down the shore. The helicopter-shaped drone located the teenagers and dropped them a floatation device, which carried them back to shore. It’s equipped with an emergency kit, GPS beacons and a camera and has a 2.5-hour battery life. It was originally developed as a real-time shark detection system.

In Rwanda, a California startup called Zipline uses drones to send urgent medical supplies like blood to remote clinics and hospitals almost instantaneously. Even the most sensitive items can be shot off into the sky over the harshest of terrains with a range of 75km one way (about 46.6 miles.) Again, this isn’t theoretical – it’s in use right now, and expanding to new countries.

In Sweden, automatic external defibrillators (AED) are transported by drone to people experiencing cardiac arrest faster than an ambulance can reach them. Land Rover’s ‘Discovery’ vehicles have officially joined the Red Cross emergency response fleet, and each one comes with an advanced eight-rotor drone fitted with a long-range thermal imaging camera capable of spotting a person from over 1,440 feet away.

Saving the Lives of Animals

Drones are already helping scientists fight wildlife extinction. They’re more accurate at counting animals in the wild and generating data than people, they can monitor and assess dangerous situations like whales trapped in fishing nets and deliver the right supplies to human first responders and even watch out for poachers targeting perilously endangered species like rhinos. Drones equipped with medicated peanut butter pellets are helping scientists save the lives of the most endangered mammal in North America – the black-footed ferret – by feeding their favorite prey, the prairie dog, which has been dying from a deadly disease called sylvatic plague.

For a while, it seemed like efforts to use drones to save the lives of animals could be undone by scenarios in which they actively harm them instead. Dutch police got the bright idea to train eagles to take out suspicious drones that could be used to commit crimes, but people were concerned that the propellers could hurt the birds. As it turns out, the eagles weren’t particularly good at the job, and the program was suspended.

Augmenting Sustainable Technologies

Drones of various sorts could be deployed as tiny autonomous assistants for other forms of technology, helping to maintain complex systems or just making sure we don’t run out of juice in our electric cars while far away from charging stations. The Volt car-charging drone by Yeop Baek is a quadcopter that can be summoned by smartphone, allowing drivers to request a refuel no matter where they might be at the moment – a service that seems like it could be extended to gas cans for a greater number of drivers in the present.

A Latvian startup called Aerones is working on 28-motor quad copers designed to clean and de-ice massive wind turbines quickly and safely so they can produce maximum output. In some cases, drones could even outperform standard technologies, like the ‘Twing’ by Swiss startup Twingtec, a kite-like flying machine that can soar to high altitudes to harvest strong, steady winds, even when the air lower to the ground is still.

Drones could also collect data on weather, pollution, soil moisture, lava flows – you name it. They could help extinguish forest fires, map changes in forested areas and replace gas-guzzling agricultural machines, helping to reduce emissions. In fact, this last point connects to one of the best known uses for drones, one that’s usually pretty easy to make fun of – having whatever crap we want delivered to us on demand.

Convenience, Art & Fun

Amazon, UPS, Google and DHL are among the companies exploring ways to deliver packages via drones instead of trucks, and Uber Eats is getting ready to test food delivery drones with the aim of getting its “UberExpress” program off the ground by 2021. If having takeout and our latest Amazon Prime purchases dropped off on our doorsteps by drone seems like peak human laziness, consider how many delivery cars and trucks it could help eliminate on the road.

The Smithsonian did some research, finding that in some cases, using electric-powered trucks would be more efficient and easier, but in others, drones help reduce both energy usage and greenhouse gas emissions. But the results really depend on how heavy the package is, where it’s being delivered and the locations of warehouses.

In any case, drones are almost ready to be omnipresent for all sorts of purposes, even if that means hovering over us to provide light or protect us from the rain, as in the case of designer Fabien Roy’s “Low Gravity” drone lamp or the “Free Parasol” by Asahi Power Service. They’re already helping artists produce incredible landscape photography, amazing illusions, massive murals and more. They’ve even been programmed to rain candy from hovering clouds on demand, an idea that kids came up with themselves.

All of these functions have come a long way in just a few short years, and it’ll be interesting to see how the technology progresses in the near future.

The kind of military technology only imagined in sci-fi movies like Iron Man and Star Wars could be coming to an international conflict near you sometime in the very near future. As if missiles and nuclear bombs weren’t enough, militaries around the world are currently developing a terrifying range of deadly weapons as well as aircraft that could take warfare into space. Some of it is unconfirmed – like Russia’s supposed mind control guns, which impair the higher cognitive functions of crowds – while some is already in early stages of deployment, like the puke-inducing ‘thunder generators’ now in use against protesters by local police.

Hypersonic Projectiles

Hypersonic weapons fly over five times the speed of sound to not only make them a hell of a lot more powerful, but also evade detection, tracking and attempts to destroy them. Among them is the Electromagnetic Railgun under development by the Office of Naval Research – essentially a flying hypersonic strike that whizzes through the air at around 5,600 miles per hour. It’s capable of traveling up to 100 miles, arrives with virtually zero warning and tears things up about as much as you’d expect. Oh, and it’s also guided. It uses magnetic fields generated by huge amounts of energy to travel.

Though it has cost the Pentagon about $500 million since they first began working on it in 2005, there’s some question as to whether it will ever be implemented due to the sheer expense of it. The military now appears to be more interested in the spiked projectiles than the weapon that fires them, investigating their use in available powder weapons before moving forward on testing the railgun.

Thunder Generators

Thunder generators were first tested as a way to ‘humanely’ scatter birds away from crop fields and other areas, like the landfill seen in the video above. But of course, if it’s capable of generating shock waves that scare birds, it could also be leveled up for crowd control usage on humans. While stunning people from a range of 30 to 100 meters will only create the kind of sonic blast that either makes people run in panic or knocks them off their feet, get closer and it kills. It looks pretty nondescript – just a single barrel that can be mounted on a mobile base – but you can put several of them together for a more powerful effect, and a curved barrel will allow the sonic waves to turn 90-degree corners. The similar LRAD Sound Cannon (Long Range Acoustical Device) looks a like a speaker.

Developed in Israel, it’s now being marketed for military and security applications, and it’s equipped with enough gas to produce around five thousand blasts. It’s just one of many acoustic weapons in use and development by military and police forces, often deployed against protesters like those at the Dakota Access Pipeline in South Dakota. Just a short blast from a typical sonic weapon can make everyone in a crowd spontaneously puke. Unsurprisingly, their use can also lead to health problems like hearing loss and traumatic brain injuries.

‘Smart’ Tracking Bullets

The phrase ‘dodging a bullet’ may seem quaint very soon thanks to tracking technologies that make sure bullets don’t miss their targets. So-called ‘smart bullets’ contain optical sensors to hit moving and evading targets, and even a novice shooter using the system for the first time will almost certainly hit the mark. This DARPA project achieves extreme accuracy at sniper ranges that can’t be achieved with traditional rounds, and the .50 caliber bullets travel at hundreds of miles per hour.

Powered Exoskeletons

Iron Man-style powered exoskeleton suits have plenty of possibilities that aren’t nefarious, like helping medical professionals lift and carry patients more easily, or allowing paralyzed people to walk. But in addition to mobility, they bestow the wearer with an uncanny strength, and several different models are being developed for use by soldiers. One is Lockheed Martin’s FORTIS knee-stress-release device, which uses independent actuators and motors along with a lithium ion battery to let soldiers carry 180 pounds up five flights of stairs without tiring while also preventing knee injuries. DARPA is testing a battery-powered exoskeleton as well, and China and Russia have their own versions, “turning soldiers into Stormtroopers.”

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What would Stanley Kubrick think? With its nonthreatening, simplistic stick figure face set in a spheroid plastic housing, CIMON the ‘flying brain’ is probably more analogous to GERTY, the emoji face AI assistant in the movie ‘Moon,’ than Kubrick’s famous antagonist HAL 9000 from ‘2001: A Space Odyssey.’ But the fact that astronauts will have this smiley-faced companion floating around them in space this summer inevitably brings a lot of pop culture references to mind.

Lest you start feeling like the future has really arrived, you might want to a good look at CIMON, the ‘mobile and autonomous assistance system’ powered by IBM’s Watson Supercomputer. Developed by Airbus and Germany’s DLR space agency, the bot is set to launch to the ISS between June and October 2018 in a test by geophysicist Dr. Alexander Gerst during the European Space Agency’s Horizons Mission. Is it just us, or does this thing look like it was designed in the 1980s?

Nevertheless, it’s a notable first in bringing artificial intelligence to space. It’s manufactured using 3D printing and weighs about 11 pounds. CIMON (Crew Interactive MObile companioN) is capable of voice and facial recognition and aims to keep astronauts company, providing social and informational benefits while also serving as an early warning system for technical problems. It can display procedures for routine tasks on its 8-inchscreen and move up to one meter per second.

“From summer 2018, CIMON will become the new ‘crew member’ on the International Space Station (ISS), in order to demonstrate cooperation between humans and intelligent machines in the form of a technology experiment,” says DLR, the German Aerospace Center.

“CIMON will enter microgravity on 9 March 2018 during the 31st DLR parabolic flight campaign in Bordeaux. In particular, orientation, navigation and steering will be tested, to ensure that it is optimally prepared for use on the ISS – in permanent microgravity. In June, CIMON will then travel to the ISS on board the US Space-X CRS-15 space transport mission, where it will be greeted by the German ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst.”

“Following a functional test, the German astronaut will perform three experiments with his artificial colleague. On the agenda are experiments with crystals and a Rubik’s cube, and a medical experiment in which CIMON will be used as a flying camera.”

“CIMON allows the astronaut to keep both hands free, with no need to manually operate a computer, for example. Thanks to this fully voice-controlled access to documents and media, the astronaut can conveniently navigate through operating and repair instructions and procedures for experiments and equipment. CIMON will thus serve as a complex database of all the necessary information for working on the ISS, and can also be used as a mobile camera for documentation purposes.”

“In the medium-term, we want to concentrate on group effects that develop in small teams over a long period of time and can occur during long-term missions to the Moon and Mars. Social interaction between humans and machines, and between astronauts and emotionally intelligent flight attendants could play an important role in the success of these missions,” explains Till Eisenberg, CIMON project lead at Airbus Friedrichshafen.

When 3D printers are widely accessible and affordable, will we see another industrial revolution, enabling us to manufacture just about everything we need on demand? Progress made in 3D printing thus far looks promising. Designers, engineers, architects and even novices are printing everything from fully functional human hearts and custom biodegradable shoes to full-scale architecture and bicycle bridges. One designer even printed himself a large-format camera based on three models he couldn’t afford.

Beating Artificial Heart

Created by researchers at ETH Zürich, this 3D-printed silicone heart beats almost like a real one, and though it’s not yet considered a viable long-term replacement, it can help keep a patient’s blood flowing while they’re waiting for a donor organ. Right now, the material can only withstand about 45 minutes of usage, but the team sees it as a proof of concept showing a way forward for artificial hearts in the future.

Ceramic Constellation Pavilion

Made entirely of 3D-printed terra-cotta bricks with a unique shape that allows them to slot together without conventional brick bonding techniques, ‘Ceramic Constellation Pavilion’ gives us a glimpse at what we might be able to achieve with 3D-printed architecture in the decades to come. The structure was created by the University of Hong Kong’s Department of Architecture along with Sino Group. “In a context that has largely been shaped by standardization and mass production, the project seeks to overcome the constraints of today’s architectural production through the introduction of a structure made entirely of non-standard components.”

Robotic Sign Language Arm

Shortages of sign language interpreters internationally (and the difficulty of finding one on the spot) led the students behind Project Aslan to seek better ways to bridge the communication gap between the hearing and deaf communities. This robotic sign language hand is one result, using 3D printing to make it more affordable and easy to build. The robot receives information from a local network to activate its joints, allowing it to interpret written language into sign language. It’s not meant to replace human interpreters, but rather step in when they aren’t available, and can be used to teach sign language, too.

Digital Grotesque II 3D-Printed Grotto

Designed entirely by algorithms, ‘Digital Grotesque II’ is a 3D-printed pavilion made of 7 tons of printed sandstone, with an incredible 1.35 billion surfaces. It’s another look at how we could achieve unprecedented complexities, porosities and spatial depth in future architecture using 3D printing and other new methods of fabrication as robotics become more accessible.

Flying Iron Man Suit

Considering the optimism and rapid rate of progress in the 20th century, many of us expected to have cooler toys by now. Are we finally about to get a suit that lets us fly? Kind of. The Iron Man suit by Gravity Industries is set to be 3D printed in metal, with six miniature jet engines mounted to the arms and back for vertical takeoff and flight. However, it’ll literally take an Iron Man to wear the thing, as it takes enormous strength to control the jets. The suit itself weights up to 90 pounds.

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