I feel like putting taller and thicker rails on the bridge could be a non-AI form of suicide prevention.
this post was submitted on 16 May 2026
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triggers an alarm if an object identified as a person remains for more than 300 seconds in a bridge's "loitering Zones"
Is this one of those things where we're just calling everything AI? This seems like a script with machine learning object recognition, and definitely not a determination you'd want to leave up to an AI.
Still, the technology has its weaknesses. Kim said the system carries a hallucination rate of about 15 percent, including instances where it misidentifies an object as a person, which is why human judgment remains the final call.
Don't worry, they treat it as a tool, like how people treat doorbell cameras with motion detection.
I guess it would be AI or machine learning specifically with OpenCV and attach it to a pre trained model. I guess that could work and slap on AI for increased price
machine learning is AI
This is one of the good uses of AI. It is called object detection with neural networks and is a very classic use of convolutional neural networks (CNNs) in computer vision.
There was no LLM, no transformer, no huge data center necessary for training this model.
Please distinguish generative from predictive AI, it means a lot to all the data scientists out there inventing cool stuff!
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So instead of tackling the causes of suicide, they tackle the results.
They do something similar in the US for crimes. Why prevent crimes with welfare, single payer health care and a living wage when you can arm the police to the teeth with tanks and increase prison space.
You can do both. Also a lot of people who try to commit suicide don't try immediately after they fail, so picking them up alive gives you time to help them. If it was like "well whatever, we'll pick them up on the bridge so we don't have to worry about tackling the causes of suicide" i'd agree with you 100%, but that is not what this news is about. It's about improving a method to prevent the suicide from happening, like nets around high buildings. It's sad the root causes aren't fixed with this, but it's still a good thing happening imo.
Did you get from the article that they're not also doing that, or is that from your own knowledge of the mental health care in that country?
Just extrapolating from personal experience
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I am not very uplifted to be honest since the same technology and devices can be used for large scale surveillance.
There's also the issue of adaptation. There's articles now explaining this technology which means if I'm in South Korea and I want to jump off a bridge I know I'll have to do it quickly or otherwise they'll come and get me. For some this might be the added pressure they need to go through with it.
Ultimately the best way to prevent suicide is to make life worth living and provide support for those who are in a mental health crisis. Neither of those things are going well in SK and AI surveillance won't fix that either.
Or don’t go to a bridge?
Bridge jumpers aren’t usually the ones that just walk off the edge with zero hesitation.
good point.
Which they mention in the article:
The center's reach extends beyond rescue. The system supports filtered searches by gender, age and clothing type — a search for "April 29, male, Mapo," for example, pulls up footage of every adult male who crossed Mapo Bridge that day, helping police map the movement routes of suspects. All data is strictly managed under the Personal Information Protection Act and deleted after one month.
Emphasis mine. Who thinks they actually delete those records?
RIP birdwatchers and photographers, haha.
So do the people attempting suicide get help after the ai detects them, otherwise wouldn't the person just attempt suicide somewhere else?
I've always read that suicide is usually an impulse decision, and if you can block the attempt, many people won't try again.
https://www.npr.org/2008/07/08/92319314/in-suicide-prevention-its-method-not-madness
That's interesting. From what I understand people who commit self harm often do it multiple times, so I assumed it was the same for suicide
It's why when the UK brought limits on the amount of Paracetamol you could buy in a single transaction in the early 00s the amount of self positioning from it dropped massively. You would think that people would just go to the next shop down the road or come back later in the day.
Huge middle finger to these people would probably be to get a fine for attempting suicide in the first place.
See? AI saves lifes. Now go pend your tokens and stop using your brain, meatbag /s
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