Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#261

Post by NedIsakoff » Thu, May 23, 2019, 12:46 PM UTC

aeturnum wrote: post #258

lukasLansky wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, AI regulation needs to be global to be effective. The difference between "we should abstain from our moral values because everyone dies anyway in the end" and "we should find ways to pursue our moral values effectively" is substantial. You don't have to be nihilistic to not accept cheap signaling being sold as a solution to real problems. Few corporations deciding to not do dirty work, just providing their lower…

> AI regulation needs to be global to be effective. [...] not accept cheap signaling being sold as a solution to real problems. Amazon making a pledge not to work on facial recognition does not seem like cheap signaling to me! Cheap signaling would be Google's "AI Ethics Board" staffed with people unlikely to make trouble while Google continues to work on AI. A pledge not to work on technology is an expensive signal!…

At the time there was no alternative to IBM and their technology. Same can be said of Dow Chemicals.

Now there is competitors. Alibaba Cloud and Tencent Cloud will gladly help anyone with facial recognition . See how evil America refuse to help you with your needs? We will because we care about your needs, China will support you.

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#262

Post by NedIsakoff » Thu, May 23, 2019, 12:47 PM UTC

rb666 wrote: post #222

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.

At the same time China is producing more banned CFC, no one is doing anything.

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#263

Post by Nasrudith » Thu, May 23, 2019, 12:53 PM UTC

munk-a wrote: post #55

malvosenior wrote: post #7

Regulating this technology seems like regulating encryption. Futile. You can never put the tech genie back in the bottle. Especially since presumably many of the foundation layers of this technology are open source with wide scale applications. Will they outlaw machine learning? TensorFlow? Obviously whatever Amazon is doing is more complicated than throwing a ton of face images at TensorFlow but as technology progre…

> Regulating this technology seems like regulating encryption. Futile. You can never put the tech genie back in the bottle. We've (effectively) put chemical warfare back in the bottle, regulations can be quite effective in shifting the public perception - but I won't argue that it's hard to do.

Given tear gas I am not sure about chemical warfare (although that also has to do with relative effectiveness).

And there is far more infastructure required for chemical weaponry production and use more complex than throwing a bottle of bleach and ammonia mix.

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#264

Post by Nasrudith » Thu, May 23, 2019, 12:59 PM UTC

llamataboot wrote: post #13

jokoon wrote: post #2

Shouldn't this technology be outlawed outside law enforcement? It sounds like it can be used like a powerful tool.

I'm actually rather the /most/ concerned about law enforcement having access to it.

Yeah banning its use outside law enforcement sounds like the worst option given it is anti-transparency and accountability while allowing abuse. It woukd be far easier to selectively hide misconduct that way.

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#265

Post by ClutchBand » Thu, May 23, 2019, 1:05 PM UTC

netcan wrote: post #252

jasonkester wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's a good and reasonable personal ethic, but it transfers into a (imo) poor, even disingenuous public discourse. Let's say we're talking about the clickbait/trolling problem in political discourse. We can berate some prominent individual, but that individual is inevitable. If she wasn't doing the clickbait, someone else would be and we'd be beratying them. Focusing on the individual when a problem is systemic can…

The individuals come together to create a society with rules. To be a part of society one must follow those rules.

Ethics, to me, have a place there, and it would be better in all cases to establish those rules or norms in your society, or your culture, rather than regressive actions like banning something.

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#266

Post by snarf21 » Thu, May 23, 2019, 1:09 PM UTC

joemag wrote: post #132

ahelwer wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

See "Minority Report". Also, it is always a question of who will watch the watchers. If "recognition" is deployed, it will be taken as proof and now it is a weapon not a shield.

It is a misconstrued quote now but Ben Franklin said "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#267

Post by oarsinsync » Thu, May 23, 2019, 1:11 PM UTC

edanm wrote: post #237

oarsinsync wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may or may not be valid, but I'm not aware of any advanced technology that is 100% accurate that exists today. Rather than the hypothetical of 'is this ok if we have 100% accuracy', how about 'is 100% accuracy ever likely to be possible?' If it's not, then the previous question is about as relevant as 'if unicorns existed, would you want one?' (and yes, I would!)

I agree, which is why I wrote "or, realistically, use it in a way..." etc.

> or, more realistically, use it in a way that makes more sense than just flagging someone and ruining their life forever

I think that's less realistic than developing 100% accurate algorithms, but now we're into anthropology instead of technology...

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#268

Post by specialist » Thu, May 23, 2019, 1:18 PM UTC

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.

All technology has a moral component, it's never neutral.

I still don't know if I fully agree with Postman's Technolopy thesis, but he definitely challenged my younger technophilic self to be more critical.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technopoly

Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology is a book by Neil Postman published in 1992 that describes the development and characteristics of a "technopoly". He defines a technopoly as a society in which technology is deified, meaning “the culture seeks its authorisation in technology, finds its satisfactions in technology, and takes its orders from technology”. It is characterised by a surplus of information generated by technology, which technological tools are in turn employed to cope with, in order to provide direction and purpose for society and individuals.[1]

Postman considers technopoly to be the most recent of three kinds of cultures distinguished by shifts in their attitude towards technology – tool-using cultures, technocracies, and technopolies. Each, he says, is produced by the emergence of new technologies that "compete with old ones…mostly for dominance of their worldviews".

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#269

Post by netcan » Thu, May 23, 2019, 1:39 PM UTC

ClutchBand wrote: post #265

netcan wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good and reasonable personal ethic, but it transfers into a (imo) poor, even disingenuous public discourse. Let's say we're talking about the clickbait/trolling problem in political discourse. We can berate some prominent individual, but that individual is inevitable. If she wasn't doing the clickbait, someone else would be and we'd be beratying them. Focusing on the individual when a problem is systemic can…

The individuals come together to create a society with rules. To be a part of society one must follow those rules. Ethics, to me, have a place there, and it would be better in all cases to establish those rules or norms in your society, or your culture, rather than regressive actions like banning something.

Bans are a type of rule/norm.

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#270

Post by aeturnum » Thu, May 23, 2019, 1:59 PM UTC

NedIsakoff wrote: post #261

aeturnum wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI regulation needs to be global to be effective. [...] not accept cheap signaling being sold as a solution to real problems. Amazon making a pledge not to work on facial recognition does not seem like cheap signaling to me! Cheap signaling would be Google's "AI Ethics Board" staffed with people unlikely to make trouble while Google continues to work on AI. A pledge not to work on technology is an expensive signal!…

At the time there was no alternative to IBM and their technology. Same can be said of Dow Chemicals. Now there is competitors. Alibaba Cloud and Tencent Cloud will gladly help anyone with facial recognition . See how evil America refuse to help you with your needs? We will because we care about your needs, China will support you.

That's incorrect.

There were other tabulating machines (for example the Bull[1]) and of course there were (and are) other deforesting agents. The governments in both cases would have found another supplier.

It also would have made a difference! There's a reason the Nazis picked IBM and the US picked Dow.

If it's the case that Amazon could do better work than Tencent and Alibaba - then their abstention is laudable. If it's the case that Amazon is inferior, then they'd get out-competed in a winner-take-all marketplace so they both save money and have clean hands. So win-win.

[1] http://www.feb-patrimoine.com/projet/bull_t30/tabu_t30.htm