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President Biden Releases New Infrastructure Plan; Facial Recognition Technology Sees Greater Use. Aired 4-4:10a ET
Aired April 01, 2021 - 04:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(MUSIC)
CARL AZUZ, CNN 10 ANCHOR: Happy April Fool`s Day. Can you celebrate April Fool`s Day? Would that be a fool`s errand?
However you look at it, we are kicking off a new month of coverage on CNN 10. We`re so glad you`re watching. I`m Carl Azuz.
With a new stimulus plan enacted into law last month, the $1.9 trillion spending package focused on fighting the effects of coronavirus, the Biden
administration is turning its attention to its next legislative priority, a two-part infrastructure package. The first, which President Joe Biden
discussed on Wednesday, would include government spending to update everything from roads and bridges to the electric grid, investments in
fifth generation technology or 5G, manufacturing in America, alternative forms of energy, cyber security, all this would be included in the bill.
The second part which will be formally proposed later will focus on providing more benefits for lower income families offering free preschool
for children and free community college to high school graduates and expanding child care programs. The total estimated cost for both of these
packages together could be higher than $4 trillion, and a big debate right now is how or if the government would pay for it.
The Biden administration has proposed offsetting some of the cost by increasing the corporate tax rate, the percentage of profits paid by
corporations based in America.
Currently, that tax rate is 21 percent. The government wants to increase it to 28 percent. It also plans to increase taxes on people who earn $400,000
or more per year. This would raise more than $2 trillion for the government over the next 15 years, according to the Biden administration.
But the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says it would hurt American businesses and their ability to compete internationally. And congressional Republicans
have said they`re opposed to tax increases.
Lawmakers are also divided over how far the infrastructure plans should go, how much they should cost, and what the money would be spent on. So,
experts say debate on this in the House and Senate will take considerably longer than it did on the COVID relief bill, and the infrastructure
proposals could undergo a lot of changes before they come up for votes in the House and Senate.
So the Biden administration`s plan is a first step toward what could become a months-long process concerning a new infrastructure package.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
AZUZ (voice-over): Ten-second trivia:
Which of these historic American theme parks was built the most recently?
Steeplechase Park, Disney World, Lake Compounce, or Cedar Pointe?
Having opened in 1971, Disney World in Orlando, Florida, is the youngest park on this list.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AZUZ: The first visitor to that park was escorted inside by Mickey Mouse himself. Half a century later, some of the newest visitors are being
tracked by their faces. Disney World is currently testing out facial recognition technology. People can choose whether or not to participate. If
they do, Disney system generates unique ID numbers to match their faces with their admission tickets.
The park says it`s looking at ways to offer more touchless experiences in the era of COVID-19. Its test is scheduled to run until April 23rd and
after that, Disney says it will delete all the images and ID numbers it`s collected.
Some visitors will appreciate its convenience others will be concerned about privacy. As the use of facial recognition has increased around the
world, many of the laws surrounding how and when it can be used haven`t been written yet.
Critics are concerned the technology could be abused to track wherever people go and who`s along with them. And it`s still new, the programs have
flaws to iron out and can still get identification wrong. But as it advances, faces could one day become the only form of ID some people carry
with them.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SAMUEL BURKE, CNN BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): While the iPhone 10 is bringing facial recognition technology to people
around the world, a group of scientists in the U.K. want to push the technology even further, looking to replace your metro card or work badge
with a system of cameras and your face.
Oh, it got me even though I was just in there for --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah.
BURKE: -- a few seconds, it picked me up right away.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So it`s running real time and at very fast speed.
BURKE: That`s a bit scary because it just saw me for like a split second.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah.
BURKE: For machine learning, what are the kind of highlights that stand out?
Is it the nose? Is it cheeks? What are -- what are the major differences that it sees right away?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What we manually actually control is to reconstruct your 3D face and that is up to the computer to decide which part of your
face is more discriminative from other people`s faces.
BURKE: If you`re concerned about privacy, at least as things stand right now, you have to enroll first for the system to recognize you.
So how do we make it so that this system knows who Samuel Burke is?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: As you can see here on screen, it`s capturing a number of your images. We are using 3D information from your face. The more
information the system knows about you, the higher chance it will recognize you at a later stage.
BURKE: With a new hack every day, many people worry about storing personal information in the cloud and it doesn`t get much more personal than your
face. The professor who started this project believes facial recognition is neither good nor evil.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Face recognition is being used in humans and 3D systems very commonly. You see the airports and so on, but they can all be fooled
just by holding a photograph of somebody else in front of your face. And obviously if you`re recovering the 3d phase, the morphology of the face --
you can`t really change your nose, and you can`t really hide it. So it`s a reliable biometric of who you`re dealing with an airport. You can improve
the security by making it spoof proof.
BURKE: Twins, that`s the question that everybody has about the iPhone 10 and facial recognition. CNN, we ran some experiments and it could not tell
the difference.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Wins are a big problem to face recognition systems. We do recently have people coming up who are doppelgangers they look really
alike, the system managed to recognize them and separate them like 100 percent accurately.
BURKE: So whether it`s transportation, advertising, security or banking, the facial recognition revolution is coming for all of us.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You imagine how crazy it is of Russia and any of these London stations, if you have gateless gate lines, you remove those gates.
It`s going to really help to get through people through there. It`s going to make everybody`s life a lot more pleasant.
BURKE: Samuel Burke, CNN, Bristol, England.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AZUZ: Unlike my good friend here, cats do whatever they want and it`s hard to get them to go along with your plan, hence the expression it`s like
herding cats, maybe because they`re said to have nine lives, they just never grow up. I mean, many of us when we`re kids have different ideas than
our parents about how we`re going to go about things in life, even bear cubs for instance sometimes want to take a different path. And it`s not so
much a question about why mama bear crossed the road as it is how she did it with three wayward cubs.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JEANNE MOOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Mama bear and four cubs stopped traffic in Connecticut trying to cross a road. Mom has her paws
full not to mention her mouth.
A third cub crosses, no, make that prances to the other side. Three across and one to go -- uh-oh, the fourth cub is up a pole.
Mom to the rescue but wait someone`s back. It can be a drag wrangling four little ones. This is something any human mom can relate to.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Go, babies, go.
MOOS: Robin Cavelli (ph), mother of four, shot the video, instead of the pole climber in particular.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He reminded me so much of my son. I could just hear myself yelling, get down off of that pole, get across the street, you`re
making a scene here.
MOOS: Someone on Twitter posted, aw, someone should get out of their car and help. Somebody else put the wise in wise guy by replying, you want to
be mauled because that`s how you get mauled.
Meanwhile, mom was gently mauling her babies.
Robin Tavelli`s takeaway.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Just how hard it is to be a mom and especially four babies and I`ve really felt for the mom.
MOOS: And just when it seemed all four were safely across, one of the cubs made a break for it crossing the double yellow line. Mom was forced once
again to take matters into her mouth as another cub followed in her footsteps.
This is the kind of behavior that inspires lame jokes like, why did the bear cross the road? To get to the other cub.
Jeanne Moos, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AZUZ: Love to know what she was thinking though. Cub on, why cub-n`t you be more like your brother. Just becub up we cub to a fork in the road
doesn`t mean you need to cub-bine to becub so unbearable. How do you expect me to be a good bearett (ph) when I have to bear up under such a beard (ph)
as this whole cub and cuboodle.
I`m Cuble Azuz, and this is CNN 10, where we got Spirit. Spirit Lake High school is in Spirit Lake, Iowa. Thank you so much for your comment on
YouTube. Hope to see all y`all on Friday.
END
