this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2025

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China equips traffic police with AI smart glasses for real-time vehicle checks (www.gizmochina.com)

submitted 2 days ago by Rekall_Incorporated@piefed.social to c/hardware@lemmy.world

30 comments fedilink hide all child comments

China’s traffic police are using AI smart glasses to identify vehicles in seconds, reduce inspection time, and improve road safety.

top 30 comments

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[–] kindred@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 2 days ago (1 children)

One of the most important features of these glasses is automatic license plate recognition. The system works offline with an accuracy rate of over 99% and delivers results in under one second.

...

Once the system identifies a vehicle, the glasses connect to the public security traffic database in real time and pull up details such as registration information, inspection status, and violation records.

[–] partofthevoice@lemmy.zip 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

China over here making tech that connects to public databases even when offline. Impressive.

[–] bountygiver@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 days ago (2 children)

if it's just all text for basic information you definitely can store all of them in a single SD card.

[–] deltapi@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

Imagine all the privacy relevant data contained therein

[–] partofthevoice@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 days ago

Probably about 350 million passenger vehicles in China. That’s a lot of data.

[–] tekato@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

Can’t lie that’s pretty cool

[+] korendian@lemmy.zip -6 points 2 days ago (3 children)

China is living in the 21st century, while the US is regressing to the 19th century.

[–] jacksilver@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago

I mean, our police do this, it's just built into their vehicles. Additionally, you apparently haven't heard of ICE using facial recognition to assault people.

[–] real_squids@sopuli.xyz 22 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Nah, the US is also using cameras and questionable AI for tracking

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago

Yeah over here ICE wears those while beating citizens with inaccurate metal replicas of The “Constitooshun”.

[–] TrickDacy@lemmy.world 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Sounds like they're living in 1984 to me

[+] korendian@lemmy.zip -7 points 2 days ago (2 children)

AI powered augmented reality making a job infinitely easier is 1984? I mean, it's China, so everything they do could be viewed from that lens, but imo, this is legitimately a cool thing to see being used in an official capacity.

[–] mrmaplebar@fedia.io 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Imagine sacrificing everybody's privacy to "make jobs easier" for cops in an techno-authoritarian police state.

Personally, I'm not interested in how easy cop's jobs are, only how good the quality of people's lives are.

[–] korendian@lemmy.zip -3 points 2 days ago (2 children)

This might blow your mind, but the ability to readily identify a vehicle has existed since the invention of the license plate. This just speeds the process up. I truly don't see how this is a step towards authoritarianism any more than China is already.

[–] TrickDacy@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago

Yes, great point. Previously there was a limitation on how easily cops could find a reason to harass you and now there isn't. There's literally zero difference between those scenarios.

[–] mrmaplebar@fedia.io 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

If you need technology to help you read a license plate then I'm not surprised you don't understand the ramifications of sweeping AI identification and tracking being used, especially in a country with poor civil rights protections.

What really blows my mind is that some people have such a shallow, surface level understanding of the potential impact of technology on society.

[–] korendian@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 days ago

Why should we not use technology to make jobs easier? Do you expect people in a warehouse to manually type in the barcode? Or for people to manually record accounting transactions rather than using software?

The information being scanned is publicly visible, and voluntarily submitted into a government database, for the purposes of being able to hold someone accountable when they commit a crime with their vehicle. Unless you think it's impossible to break the law with your vehicle, I really don't see why making it easier for the police to locate those breaking the law is a bad thing. Sure there are frivolous cases of pulling people over to harass them, but cops don't need an AI for that.

[–] TrickDacy@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

They can identify drivers instantly, thereby reducing privacy immeasurably. I say the same about speed cameras, and if they were installed everywhere the world would be much closer to 1984. Have you read that book?

[–] korendian@lemmy.zip -4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

How does the speed at which a vehicle identified relate to privacy? The ability to look up a vehicle by license plate has existed for a long time, this just speeds up an already existing process. Unless your proposing we abolish license plates for "privacy", which would be extremely problematic for multiple reasons.

[–] TrickDacy@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I have no clue how you're missing the difference between a cop moving their head from side to side to id dozens of individuals and manually typing shit in to id one at a time.

You are coming off like a bootlicker. And I guess you answered my question despite having tried to ignore it. You didn't read it

[–] korendian@lemmy.zip 0 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Do you really think cops sit there and manually type in every license plate? No, they have automated plate readers. This shit has existed since the 70's.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number-plate_recognition

Not really sure how stating facts about currently existing technology makes me a bootlicker, but ok.

[–] TrickDacy@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Do you really think cops sit there and manually type in every license plate?

They cannot possibly do that. That's my entire point. I have no idea what you're arguing about other than you're mad someone thinks this invades privacy which it 1000% does.

[–] korendian@lemmy.zip -1 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Please explain to me how using a computer to scan publicly visible information that you voluntarily submitted into a government database is a violation of privacy.

[–] TrickDacy@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Please explain how losing the ability to move through society without every cop knowing you exactly who you are isn't. I'll wait.

[–] korendian@lemmy.zip -1 points 2 days ago

Is that not a thing that's possible now? Again, license plate scanners exist. This is not new.

[–] ellieficent@reddthat.com 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Okay, from a naive POV, if this was only used for that purpose, sure it's too bad. But there's logging, theres extra info gathered here.

Scanning a plate instantly enters at a minimum, into a DB:

car info
location
timestamp
speed
owner

Do that a multiple times to the same car across the area, every day, now you can extrapolate where they go, when they go, predict what they're doing in the future, the route they take the likely speed they'll go and all sorts of other privacy invading info.

This data could be used to accuse you of a crime, of cheating on your spouse, of speeding without a speed camera based on distance between scans, doing nefarious in their eyes things, etc.

Edit: and just imagine if this data leaked, which it likely would. Stalkers would love it, among theives and all sorts of other people.

[–] korendian@lemmy.zip 0 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Again, the car info and owner are already available to police at will, instantly using plate scanners. The location, timestamp, and speed are also already being logged with your phone, whenever you use a gps to navigate, and sometimes even when you're not. I'm not saying these things are good or bad, it's just that people see AI and immediately jump to "this is literally 1984", when it's literally not, and it's not too far off from technology that we already have permeated into society for a while now.

[–] ellieficent@reddthat.com 1 points 2 days ago

Nah, for me, this has absolutely nothing to do with AI. I don't use my phone for nav and can easily leave it at home. This is 100% about security and reducing tracking and PII. Not to mention, not putting all the pieces together in one handy, easily leakable database.

[–] TrickDacy@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Actually fuck this I don't have time for these bad faith bullshits anymore. Blocking is a lovely feature.

[–] korendian@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 days ago