Picture a CCTV camera installed onto the side of a building or onto a telegraph pole in a busy urban space. The camera has no pre-set configuration or coded rules, it simply observes its environment, studying and classifying patterns of life, continually learning. The camera will detect anomalies in the behavior and movement of people and vehicles and objects, in environmental conditions, without ever having been instructed as to what such an anomaly might look like. Every object will be detected and classified. Metadata will be captured under strict privacy rules. No imagery will be stored or streamed unless it relates to an incident or an anomaly. Unless it’s marked.

Now, connect that camera to others, to local clusters of cameras on one level, to entire networks of cameras on another, and the depth of machine learning is staggering. Sensors share data, they compare results, they train one another. They work as a system, quietly and unobtrusively, to learn and protect their environments. Within the ...