A Black Box No More — A Case For Information Symmetry in Video Analytics
By: Sonny Tai
Tags: AI, Startup, Computer Vision, Physical Security, Security Camera

A Black Box No More — A Case For Information Symmetry in Video Analytics Sonny Tai Jan 4·4 min read

Imagine coming to America as a single mother with two kids on a $12 per hour, H-1B visa sponsored job, and the first car that you buy turns out to be a lemon.

It was a ‘94 Red Oldsmobile Achieva, and mom had spent $6,000; a big chunk of her savings back then. Mom didn’t know any better — and the sketchy used car salesman probably pegged her as an immigrant woman who didn’t know how to take legal recourse, and he was right.

Mom got rid of the Olds, and she ended up buying a brand new, 2001 Saturn for over 3x the price, but that car ended up sticking with us for almost 15 years; I drove it in high school, I took it with me to college and Quantico, then I passed it onto my sister after buying my own car with my Second Lieutenant pay.

At the time, mom struggled with a severe case of information asymmetry. In his 1970 Nobel Prize-winning paper, “The Market For Lemons”, economist George Aklerof observed that the quality of goods in markets with asymmetric information decreases over time, leaving only low-quality products. Handicapped by information asymmetries, customers were unable to distinguish good cars from bad cars, and eager to turn a profit, sellers masked low-quality cars as high-quality ones. Since used cars are often sold “as-is”, the entire industry was failing on both product and service, which poisoned the reputation of the entire industry.

Just like countless customers have been burned by used car salesmen, many security leaders have also become jaded by AI companies who have overpromised and underdelivered. This is again the result of information asymmetry; security professionals are subject matter experts in threat assessments, tactical operations, and the deployment of hardware such as surveillance cameras and access control, but to many, the concept of AI is still a black box — they know that it can work, but they often don’t know why it works and the conditions required for it to work. Because of this information asymmetry, security professionals will either wait for others to take the plunge first or opt-out of adopting AI altogether.

So, what is the solution? AI companies should go the extra mile to facilitate information symmetry by focusing on advisory and support. All too often, companies publish marketing materials extolling the performance of their AI models in an effort to generate buzz, when security professionals would rather vendors invest the resources and effort into building trust and confidence. In our experience, when it comes to AI solutions, while security professionals are interested in things like model accuracy and cost, they increasingly see those as table stakes, and are much more interested about things like:

How will you support me throughout implementation and production?

How responsive is your team if technical issues arise, and will they be willing and able to stay on calls with me for as long as it takes to resolve these issues?

How does your solution integrate with my existing technology, and how does it fit into my existing operations and processes?

These questions above are industry agnostic, and have given rise to companies like Accenture and Wipro that have built billion dollar businesses around services such as Cloud Migration Consulting or SAP Implementation Consulting. However, in physical security, this consulting needs to be provided in-house by the AI company providing the service, since the vendor is usually the only subject matter expert on the deployment of their technology.

The last thing that a security professional wants is for a vendor to drop a new technology in their laps and leave them to fend for themselves. As an example, our engineers will stay on calls with customers for hours at a time to troubleshoot network and camera issues, not only to ensure that our analytics are working as advertised, but to help the customer optimize the capabilities and availability of their existing infrastructure. In doing so, we have been able help create information symmetry and earn the confidence of even the most skeptical stakeholders.

The video analytics industry is currently at a crossroads — on one hand, it has the potential to bring unprecedented efficiencies to physical security operations, but on the other, a massive amount of information asymmetry between AI companies and security professionals leaves many customers skeptical, fearing they may be left holding the bag with a “Lemon AI Deployment”, just like mom was left with the Lemon Oldsmobile 20 years ago.

This is a tough hurdle to overcome, but if we do so — if we can build trust and facilitate information symmetry, together we can make physical security one of the most exciting, innovative, and fastest growing industries of the decade.