Can AI And Other New Technologies Really Help America Reopen Safely?

As America continues the reopening process, more and more enterprises are turning to new and emerging technologies to help keep their employees, clients and customers safe. Preventing the spread of Covid-19 is paramount, and tools like contact tracing, remote monitoring, and access control have helped give businesses the confidence to reopen their doors.

But it is essential that business leaders maintain realistic expectations for technology and understand that there are no quick fixes or one-size-fits-all solutions. Technology like artificial intelligence has enabled major new advances, but it is important to recognize what technology can and cannot do as people return to the workplace.

We’ve Been Here Before

This is not the first time the nation has been forced to reopen after a closure, nor is it the first time that fears have persisted beyond a shutdown. Although the closure was much shorter in 2001, business leaders grappled with many of the same issues following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Similar to what we see today, technology was implemented to help mitigate terrorism fears, but the unfortunate reality is that much of that technology wasn’t ready for widespread use. Facial recognition technology was deployed in a wide range of public places, but it ultimately triggered too many false alarms to be effective and was eventually abandoned.

The 2017 truck attack that took place in Stockholm, Sweden, serves as another example, but it's one that accurately illustrates how technology with a narrower scope can often be used to greater effect. While facial recognition technology has come a long way since 2001, it was ultimately the latest high-quality surveillance cameras with very high image processing power that helped authorities identify and apprehend the perpetrator of the attack.

With the image quality and processing power of the latest video surveillance cameras, true video intelligence like incident detection, license plate recognition and facial recognition is now possible. But like any technology, it also has limitations. Understanding the limitations of technology doesn’t mean turning away from modern solutions — it means identifying ways to maximize their effectiveness.

Specific Technologies That Can Help America Reopen

One technology that's received considerable attention during the Covid-19 crisis is access control and intercom technology. This can be used to help mitigate groupings of people in an office setting and represents a nontraditional way to apply a fairly conventional technology.

Access control can manage who is in certain parts of the office and when and can be used for crowd management. If an employee is found to be sick, the technology can also help determine where they have been and who they are likely to have come into contact with. Combining intercom with access control also makes it possible to use facial recognition for detection, or use OCR codes sent to visitors’ phones to provide building or room access, enabling true touchless access even for visitors. This technology also makes it easier for security teams to regulate where and when certain codes or devices have access.

This technology goes together with contact tracing, which can track who is in the office on a given day. There are clear privacy implications associated with this technology, which is part of the reason it has not been readily deployed in the past. However, the public is generally more willing to give up certain privacies in the interest of the common good during times like this.

These privacy fears are reasonable, and it is important to strike a balance. For instance, we use fingerprints and facial recognition every day to unlock phones more conveniently. Contact tracing to stop a virus seems more than reasonable by comparison, especially if it can be paired with tools like audio analytics that can detect a sneeze or a cough and respond appropriately.

Heat mapping also makes a great deal of sense and has traditionally been used to increase business efficiency by showing where lines or crowds form. Today, it can be deployed to help enforce social distancing, identifying clumps of people that represent potential dangers. It has been used in a similar manner in museums in the past: tracking high-traffic areas to minimize potential damage to the art. Now it can be used to identify similar contact with other people instead, identifying areas of high traffic and congregation, which can then be mitigated.

While none of these technologies can solve the problem of disease spread all on its own, they all contribute to the goal of keeping employees safe. Despite that benefit, fears persist that workers will be displaced by these new tools, especially as the benefits of AI become clear and machines begin doing the jobs of people to avoid contact, as with order kiosks at restaurants.

It is critical for businesses to emphasize using technology to keep workers safe rather than making the mistake of believing that technology can replace them. For instance, hospitals are now using IP cameras with two-way audio in rooms to check on patients. This isn’t replacing nurses — it’s helping keep them safe and helping them manage their time and patient response more efficiently.

Remain Grounded, But Keep One Eye Toward The Future

As businesses look to identify reliable, scalable new technologies amid the Covid-19 crisis, the top priority must be to keep people safe. It is also important to realize that technology cannot fully replace humans — or common sense. Any new technology comes with concerns, and it is important to weigh the positives against the negatives. Value is often incremental, and no one technology can save the world. Deployment of new technology must be part of a strategic, long-term plan.

That said, the current situation has allowed many useful technologies to gain more widespread attention, helping businesses achieve increases in both efficiency and safety. Even a once-novel technology such as biometrics is now used to secure countless phones around the world. This will be the case with many new solutions as we observe the changing security landscape now and into the future.

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