New York MTA Wants to Use AI to Detect Weapons and Other Threats on Transit System

New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is gathering proposals from tech companies to understand how the agency can use AI to monitor the security cameras and sensors in its transit system. As Jose Martinez explains in The City, “There are more than 15,000 cameras throughout the entire transit system and on the more than 6,000 cars in the subway fleet.” With so many feeds, the MTA acknowledges that “current monitoring practices remain manual, reactive and resource intensive.”

According to Martinez, “The request spells out early steps in the MTA’s shift toward possibly using AI to perform complex public-safety work, such as analyzing real-time video feeds from subways and buses and predicting potentially unsafe behavior via cameras in the transit system.”

Technology experts warn that AI comes with its own ethical and logistical risks. In a 2024 weapons detection pilot program, a monthlong test with more than 3,000 searches at 20 stations using AI-powered scanners turned up 12 knives, no guns, and over 100 false positives.  

Martinez notes that the MTA’s request for proposals does not mention highly controversial facial recognition technology. However, “The document adds that the MTA is aiming for that monitoring setup to evolve into a ‘proactive intelligence-driven ecosystem, capable of flagging behavior, risk assessment and incident response.’” Jerome Greco, supervising attorney of The Legal Aid Society’s Digital Forensics Unit, says this prompts concerns about what defines “unusual” or “unsafe” behavior.  “Are we essentially now policing people for being strange?”