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Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

reuters.com

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Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#221

Post by ALittleLight »

Jaepa wrote: post #176
joemag wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flagging “America’s most wanted” in public places like train stations or airports. Looking for missing children. Having home automation react differently to different family members. Those are all usages I am personally totally ok with.

Those are the 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝘀𝘁 possible uses for this. To illustrate lets imagine a really really good system that had a 0% false negative rate¹ , and a 0.000001%² false positive rate. If we were to sample the entire country looking the the FBI's most wanted we would end up with ~3290 matches, 3280 of which are going to be other people³. Considering high value of the individual the chances of harassment or wrongful arrest…

It's definitely a problem if you use the face recognition as your only criteria - but if it alerted security to pay more attention to someone or to double check their documents?

Even with the false positive rate it's much more likely an individual identified by the system is a target than a random individual.

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#222

Post by rb666 »

m3kw9 wrote: post #78

If there is a ban, it should be country law, not just one company. How is this gonna achieve anything if another company goes ahead anyways?

Because the USA is failing to act on climate change (and join Paris), neither should the rest of the world? Then we can certainly abandon hope right now.

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#223

Post by kenjackson »

paxys wrote: post #163
joemag wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flagging “America’s most wanted” in public places like train stations or airports. Looking for missing children. Having home automation react differently to different family members. Those are all usages I am personally totally ok with.

What happens if the system flags the wrong person as "America's most wanted" and a trigger-happy cop is nearby? Not saying all applications are useless, but most of them definitely warrant additional thought.

6’0” black male with athletic shoes.

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#224

Post by radium3d »

jasonkester wrote: post #220
m3kw9 wrote: post #78

If there is a ban, it should be country law, not just one company. How is this gonna achieve anything if another company goes ahead anyways?

One simple ethical rule that I live by: If I ever find myself saying “if I don’t do this, somebody else will”, I don’t do the thing. It’s a good indicator that the thing in question is the wrong thing to do. Other people will still do it. That’s true. There will always be evil people in this world. But it won’t be me . And that’s important.

uhh wouldn't that mean you don't do anything? Not everything you don't do is evil ;)

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#225

Post by julkali »

jasonkester wrote: post #220
m3kw9 wrote: post #78

If there is a ban, it should be country law, not just one company. How is this gonna achieve anything if another company goes ahead anyways?

One simple ethical rule that I live by: If I ever find myself saying “if I don’t do this, somebody else will”, I don’t do the thing. It’s a good indicator that the thing in question is the wrong thing to do. Other people will still do it. That’s true. There will always be evil people in this world. But it won’t be me . And that’s important.

A very noble approach, however in the life of business, moral has no place. Which is very unfortunate in my opinion. I couldn't imagine how the world would look like if everyone thought the way you do...

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#227

Post by chmod775 »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #226

Just a reminder that like encryption, facial recognition is just applied math. Why are people trying to ban math?

First off, this was specifically about banning the selling of facial recognition software to specific players.

Also: Just a reminder that nuclear bombs are just physics is just applied math (kinda).

Just because what you're doing is rooted in the field of mathmatics doesn't automatically mean you should be doing it or selling it, especially when your application is crossing into the physical world where there is the wellbeing of humans to be concerned about.

Even if the entity you're selling to could just very well build it themselves, it still doesn't remove your moral obligation to not be the one providing it.

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#228

Post by edanm »

Jaepa wrote: post #176
joemag wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flagging “America’s most wanted” in public places like train stations or airports. Looking for missing children. Having home automation react differently to different family members. Those are all usages I am personally totally ok with.

Those are the 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝘀𝘁 possible uses for this. To illustrate lets imagine a really really good system that had a 0% false negative rate¹ , and a 0.000001%² false positive rate. If we were to sample the entire country looking the the FBI's most wanted we would end up with ~3290 matches, 3280 of which are going to be other people³. Considering high value of the individual the chances of harassment or wrongful arrest…

While valid, your criticism is with the actual ability/execution of the technology, not the concept. Imagine we get it to a 100% match or, more realistically, use it in a way that makes more sense than just flagging someone and ruining their life forever (not to mention being biased). Would you still be opposed to the technology? If so, your opposition has nothing to do with the above argument.

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#229

Post by edanm »

ahelwer wrote: post #91
plandis wrote: post #52

In my mind selling facial recognition seems no different than selling a hammer. It’s amoral, it can be used for good or bad. Id much rather see laws to limit when and how the technology can be applied.

There are very, very few moral applications of facial recognition. Logging into your phone/laptop or assisting people with prosopagnosia, I guess. Everything else basically enables mass surveillance. It is frankly astonishing, and an exemplar of technologist naivete, that so much effort was (and continues to be) dumped into developing this technology.

> There are very, very few moral applications of facial recognition.

I mean, we don't even have the technology yet, we don't have almost any real entrepreneurship around how to use it... are you sure there are no good, moral use cases to discover?

I'm afraid that this position is as naive as the flip side - techno optimists who assumed that an 'open internet' is an ultimate good, and there are no bad uses for it. There's definitely more nuance than "it's 95% bad".

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#230

Post by oarsinsync »

ALittleLight wrote: post #221
Jaepa wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are the 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝘀𝘁 possible uses for this. To illustrate lets imagine a really really good system that had a 0% false negative rate¹ , and a 0.000001%² false positive rate. If we were to sample the entire country looking the the FBI's most wanted we would end up with ~3290 matches, 3280 of which are going to be other people³. Considering high value of the individual the chances of harassment or wrongful arrest…

It's definitely a problem if you use the face recognition as your only criteria - but if it alerted security to pay more attention to someone or to double check their documents? Even with the false positive rate it's much more likely an individual identified by the system is a target than a random individual.

> > To illustrate lets imagine a really really good system that had a 0% false negative rate¹ , and a 0.000001%² false positive rate. If we were to sample the entire country looking the the FBI's most wanted we would end up with ~3290 matches, 3280 of which are going to be other people³.

> It's definitely a problem if you use the face recognition as your only criteria - but if it alerted security to pay more attention to someone or to double check their documents?

Where do you imagine this is happening? If its in an environment where papers are expected as standard (e.g. an airport), sure, this is relatively benign. If it's when you're walking through a mall and now you're being stopped and searched, how is that not bordering on harassment?

> Even with the false positive rate it's much more likely an individual identified by the system is a target than a random individual.

Much more likely than without the system, sure. Chances of it being a random individual and not the target? 99.6% (using the math above of 3280 innocents to 3290 people identified).

If a system had a failure rate of 99.6% when harassing people, I don't think I'd describe that as 'much more likely' to be a target than an innocent random.

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