Professor built ‘surveillance machine’ for China firm

AN Indian-American professor at the University of Maryland (UMD) is said to have developed machine learning software that is “useful for surveillance” as part of a six-figure research grant from Chinese tech giant Alibaba.

Alibaba provided $125,000 to a research team led by Dinesh Manocha, a professor of computer science at UMD College Park, to develop city surveillance software, The Daily Beast reported.

The software can ‘classify each pedestrian's personality and identify other biometrics,' the news site said, citing research grant documents it requested through public records. ‘These skills are used to predict the behavior of each pedestrian and are useful for surveillance,' the document says.

The US military also signed a $68 million deal with Manocha's lab to research military applications of AI technology.