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A crashed advertisement reveals logs of a facial recognition system

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Re: A crashed advertisement reveals logs of a facial recognition system

#431

Post by throwaway91111 »

fixermark wrote: post #418
rpeden wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. This isn't new. It's everywhere . The cameras retailers use with their surveillance systems are coming with facial recognition built in now. [1] And lots of retailers, banks, etc, are using systems that track people's visits across multiple locations. [2] You'll see a lot of these systems being sold as fraud/loss prevention solutions. The reason for this is that it's a relatively easy sell this way - customer…

That's always going to be tempting, and the only real tractable solution is for society to have a larger conversation on the ethics so the law can catch up with it. Note that some ethical consensus is key---without it, companies can just price "Well, some customers think image recognition is creepy" into the risk model and do it anyway. Compare privacy concerns---people talk big about their concerns over privacy, but…

Woah, i'd give away a lot of information for a candy bar. I get nothing from ads; they lower the quality of everyone's life.

Re: A crashed advertisement reveals logs of a facial recognition system

#432

Post by fixermark »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #226
ffriend wrote: post #208

As someone working on a similar project (specifically, emotion recognition) I'm highly interested to hear how such a product should look like to be not considered unethical. So far from the comments I see that: - it should be made clear that you are being analyzed e.g. by big yellow sticker near the camera - no raw data should be stored - it should be used to collect statistics, not identify individuals (?) Is it suf…

It's actually pretty simple - don't use it on people. Advertising? No. Sales? Definitely no. Augmenting that single-player video game so that it adjusts content depending on emotions and gaze of the player? Ok. Better if the player is explicitly told the game will track their reactions though. EDIT: Also, another angle. Even for advertisers / "sales optimization", I'd forgive you if that was a local, on-site system.…

Editing note: unless it was intentional, you appear to have your "cloud to butt" web extension enabled. ;)

Re: A crashed advertisement reveals logs of a facial recognition system

#433

Post by dllthomas »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #133
tyingq wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was attributing this bit to the film...I suspect the digital signage scene wasn't from the short story.

Ah, right, yep good point. I've read the story but my memory of the film overwhelms my memory of the story. I believe you are correct.

Yeah, the short story was very little like the film.

Re: A crashed advertisement reveals logs of a facial recognition system

#434

Post by [deleted] »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #133
tyingq wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was attributing this bit to the film...I suspect the digital signage scene wasn't from the short story.

Ah, right, yep good point. I've read the story but my memory of the film overwhelms my memory of the story. I believe you are correct.

[deleted]

Re: A crashed advertisement reveals logs of a facial recognition system

#435

Post by fixermark »

throwaway91111 wrote: post #431
fixermark wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's always going to be tempting, and the only real tractable solution is for society to have a larger conversation on the ethics so the law can catch up with it. Note that some ethical consensus is key---without it, companies can just price "Well, some customers think image recognition is creepy" into the risk model and do it anyway. Compare privacy concerns---people talk big about their concerns over privacy, but…

Woah, i'd give away a lot of information for a candy bar. I get nothing from ads; they lower the quality of everyone's life.

Often, you're more-or-less getting the content surrounding the ads from the ads, albeit indirectly.

My local gas station upgraded its pumps recently to allow it to play video ads on the screen used to do the credit card transaction. I don't doubt it's partially the reason that gas station is still operational when similar non-franchises vendors in town have gone under.

Re: A crashed advertisement reveals logs of a facial recognition system

#436

Post by Silhouette »

ludjer wrote: post #168
r0muald wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because when you talk to a salesperson you know you're being looked at (and reciprocally you're looking at them), and human memory is limited so it's unlikely they will retain any "data" about you when the contact is finished. Here, instead, there is no indication that you're being watched, analyzed and kept recorded for indefinite amounts of time.

If you are in public you are being looked at I do not understand your logic. When you go in a public place there are already public accessible web cams that people use to track this kind of thing i remember a thesis that used public accessible cams to try and track people and build up a database. I have always had the opinion you lose privacy when you leave your house since you are in public, and public like is oppos…

I have always had the opinion you lose privacy when you leave your house

Privacy is not black and white.

There is a world of difference between someone seeing you for a moment as they pass you in the street and forgetting you a moment later, and automated systems that permanently record everything, analyse it, correlate it with other data sets, make it searchable, and ultimately make automated decisions or provide information that will be used by others to make judgements about the affected individuals, all without the knowledge or consent of those individuals and therefore without any sort of reciprocity.

The idea that you have no reasonable expectation of privacy in a public place dates from a time when you could also expect to pass through town in relative anonymity, go about your business without anyone but your neighbours and acquaintances being any the wiser, and would probably change those neighbours and acquaintances from time to time anyway so the only people who really knew much about you would be your chosen long-time friends and colleagues. I think it's safe to say that that boat sailed a while ago, and maybe what privacy means and how much of it we should expect or protect aren't the same in the 21st century.

Re: A crashed advertisement reveals logs of a facial recognition system

#437

Post by JoeAltmaier »

bjl wrote: post #429
ffriend wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious what's the boundary between ethical and unethical. People constantly analyze each other's mood and it's perceived positively. But doing the same thing massively using automated tools is often considered inappropriate. So is it because of using technology, massiveness, purposes? I hope there's a way to make such things both efficient and not unethical.

The only way this could possibly be considered ethical is if you get informed consent from every single person the system is analysing. If you provided each person with a detailed explanation of what the data would be used for, and required them to opt-in before collecting it, that would be fine. Otherwise, what you're doing is deeply unethical.

That's at the heart of it - is examining a person in public with automated tools, unethical? Just saying it is, isn't a compelling argument.

The FBI can use automated tools for surveillance - which doesn't speak to ethics directly but indirectly, as we hope ethics drove those rules.

I can sit in my private store and observer people out the window all day, even take notes. That's not unethical; that's a sociological experiment or some such, and done millions of times a day.

It may be jarring or creepy to imagine an advertisement is sizing me up. Again, ethics is more than 'does it make people uncomfortable'.

Re: A crashed advertisement reveals logs of a facial recognition system

#438

Post by Silhouette »

fixermark wrote: post #423
pyre wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because there is no expectation of privacy does not mean that a reasonable person would assume that their every action is being recorded in precise detail to be stored away forever by a third party.

... but mostly because reasonable people haven't been brought up to speed on what is technologically feasible now.

A lot of things are technologically feasible, and in many cases can't realistically be prevented ahead of time, yet are still considered socially unacceptable or even made illegal. Just because we can do something, that doesn't mean we should. This principle has never been more relevant than in the use of technology.

Re: A crashed advertisement reveals logs of a facial recognition system

#439

Post by TeMPOraL »

fixermark wrote: post #432
TeMPOraL wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually pretty simple - don't use it on people. Advertising? No. Sales? Definitely no. Augmenting that single-player video game so that it adjusts content depending on emotions and gaze of the player? Ok. Better if the player is explicitly told the game will track their reactions though. EDIT: Also, another angle. Even for advertisers / "sales optimization", I'd forgive you if that was a local, on-site system.…

Editing note: unless it was intentional, you appear to have your "cloud to butt" web extension enabled. ;)

I had it on for so long that, for my brain, the two words are basically the same now :). I keep forgetting about it when I edit a post (the substitution happens on display, not on submit).

Re: A crashed advertisement reveals logs of a facial recognition system

#440

Post by bighi »

I work in a big retail company here in Brazil.

If you enter most of our stores with a phone in your pocket, you're being tracked. They track where you went, in front of what shelves you stopped and for how long, if you went to the cashiers of just left...

And if we track people here in the third world, you can be sure you are being much more tracked in first world stores.

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