Hint — Everyone thinks it is their own industry. Who wouldn’t? In the end AI is that disruptive. But today i am going to plead my case that the industry that is going to be the most affected is going to be Safety, Security & Automation solutions. Which not surprisingly is the industry I work in. Spoiler alert — you would agree too.

You must be thinking AI is mostly for specialized high level computing tasks or is something that can answer all your questions, right? You are not wrong, but there is more to it. AI is something that understands simple english and has the capability to translate it to other languages including machine language which enables machines to understand what is needed to be done next for their master.

When you say “Alexa, switch off Fan”, it does not actually go to press the switch, it looks for an Bluetooth or network device labelled ‘Fan’, which is capable of relay (NO-NC or On-Off) operations and sets the switch to 0 (zero) which in machine terms is off. Now if you are here reading this blog, you don’t need this kind of a explanation but I hope this clears a little more about how machines are not able to integrate to such an extent.

Now imagine the following cases:

1. Imagine CCTV cameras finding out if workers have worn safety helmets or not. Footage automatically flagging unusual behaviors, or missing objects.

2. Road safety equipments like speed breakers generating electricity & keeping count of vehicles. While also disallowing wrong side traffic and

3. Attendance machines being obsolete with the infusion of AI being able to recognize people more effectively.

4. Safety equipment connected to a central monitoring station which automatically flags any accident on impact (whatever needs to be sensed can be set including chemicals, or falls, or more).

5. Access management interlinked to all smart components in the whole premises. So if I don’t switch off all my lights and fans, I cannot leave the premises. If I haven’t returned a key, I cannot leave the premises. And so on.

6. Asset management to be 24 X 7 monitored using existing infrastructure. Saving crores of assets. Without anyone just trying to scan 1000’s of items every quarter.

GBs of CCTV footage analyzed in fraction of seconds

Let me tell you many of these solutions are already in the market and many are under prototype stage. This might make you wonder if the examples are not that futuristic — then why are they being shown as examples here. The problem was never the absence of elegant technology in our industry it was the way it was implemented. This is where most customers have failed before and this is my whole point, as soon as AI is available to more people, it will enable them to setup these elegant solutions without needing “trained” manpower. 
So why the Safety, Security & Automation industry? Why am I placing my bet on it being the epicenter of AI implementation?

There are only three basis for this argument:
1. Your safety need or security needs cannot be known to the vendor as well as you know them. Being vulnerable to your vendor and telling them about all your fear is never something people prefer, nor should they tell the person installing the safe in their system what they plan to put into the safe. 
2. “Trained” manpower is expensive. Actually, Safety isn’t expensive, it’s priceless. But only when we want to use a high end quote we say things like “Safety is priceless”. When we select the vendor or products, it is never the case. We think connecting 4 cables is the most important part, but actually you can pickup a labour from the road and get fixing & connections done, but the talent lies in configuration. The ability to understand why and how things should be configured, is something that is expensive at the moment because it is human dependent. Now AI is going to make it available for almost nothing, so you can replace the engineer and actually get most of it done by the laborer.

3. Systems that don’t evolve with time are as good as dummy cameras, while for us safety & security might not be the most pressing thing, because lets be honest, it is not a priority until something happens to us or someone close to us. But if you are reading this much just because you are proactively finding something in this industry, I would like to salute you. But for the people trying to steal or cause harm, for them beating the system is their calling, so they are going to put in the efforts learning more about the systems and how to find loop holes or blind spots. If we are not actively fighting off this threat, how are we going to cope up? The answer is AI.

I rest my case, and before you pass your judgement on this, I want you to think about the background issues causing all this, unfortunately, we cannot dive that much into detail since our attention span has reduced equivalent to the memory of a gold fish. But overall the requirement to be safe individually and as a society, is our birthright. Not implementing AI & better systems that manage on their own would be the same as a neurosurgeon riding a horse instead of a car because he does not understand mechanical engineering.

We are here if you need to implement better systems! https://ktindia.net

P.S — Code development is the most affected area through AI, which I agree 100%, no doubt, but the industry where this is going to reach billions of people is going to be Safety, Security & Automation solutions, because it can reach hardware in a way, which most benefits the client paying for it.