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Originally published on 03/04/2002
"Winter Games go out with a bang," the Associated Press headline read. For a brief moment I pictured a bomb attack at the Olympics. I've been paranoid since I interviewed Don Busby, CEO of Hilton Technologies, regarding his company's product, StaySafe, which models the dispersal of aerial particles released in a chemical, biological, or nuclear attack. Using online weather data and the particulars of the release, it uses artificial intelligence to plot escape routes that keep people ahead of the toxins. It can save lives.
Over the phone, Don walked me through a simulation of a toxic cloud spreading over my hometown. As we watched the plume of material move over San Francisco, we also watched the line of a single person's escape route march down the road away from the cloud. But the cloud overtook the line. The person was caught in the lethal zone.
This is not the result I was hoping to see, but as Don said, stoically, "Knowing which people not to evacuate is as important as knowing who to evacuate." That was chilling enough, and then I thought of this program in the wrong hands, with the simulation being played for lethality, not rescue.
StaySafe is not available to just anybody, thankfully. The product is sold directly to governments and municipalities, as well as large companies like Disney. The $4,900 software also has to be authenticated over the Internet to run. Yet with a projected market of 20,000 customers, I would not bet against the product ending up in the wrong hands.
Many otherwise benign tools can be turned into weapons. I'm not a fan of obsessive regulation, so I state this obvious fact simply to encourage customers and manufacturers to be aware of this, and to make sure that these tools are locked up when not in use.
- Rafe Needleman
email: rafe-needleman@catchoday.com
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