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Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

reuters.com

281–290 of 295 posts

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#281
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can one report an AWS issue from a TSA inspection room?

No, you can call your lawyer instead.

Even lawyers have a hard time dealing with secretive no-fly lists - I wonder if face triggering by resemblance to data on a list is accessible enough to contest.

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#282
post #176
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…

This is still better than the current paradigm of LEOs stopping and frisking anyone who "matches the description". That phrase has basically turned into carte blanche to harass anyone they want with plausible deniability. With facial recognition at least now there's one more constraint they'd have to operate under for probably cause, right?

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#283
post #282
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…

This is still better than the current paradigm of LEOs stopping and frisking anyone who "matches the description". That phrase has basically turned into carte blanche to harass anyone they want with plausible deniability. With facial recognition at least now there's one more constraint they'd have to operate under for probably cause, right?

That's true only if this somehow replaces the current paradigm. New technology generally supplements existing methodologies rather than replacing it.

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your (USA) police forces are crooked. They swat people on a first signal they've received. Instead they should attempt to verify first and try to approach people in civilised manner, not shoot their pets...

That's a minority of police forces. There are a lot of police that truly care about doing the right things. The media covers corrupt police commonly and caring police rarely.

But you don't see such news come out from UK, AU, NZ or most of europe.

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#285
post #228
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…

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.

> Would you still be opposed to the technology? If so, your opposition has nothing to do with the above argument.

That's kind of a denying the antecedent propositional fallacy.

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#286
post #12

What was the point of taking this to shareholders? On what planet would anyone expect them to vote any other way?

A tiny fraction of shares are probably owned by activist individuals with socially responsible interests. The rest are employees [1] with self-interest and giant funds with big piles of them whose only metric is returns. Of course they'll all vote for the gain. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/insights/052816/top-4-...

~36% of the voting power comes from top 20 institutional/mutual fund holders and about 14% of the vote comes from Jeff Bezos himself[1]. The board of directors recommended all holders vote against this. Even if every shareholding employee of Amazon voted for this, there's very little chance it would've made it past the institutions voting along with the board recommendations.

[1]: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AMZN/holders?p=AMZN

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#287
post #91
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 lots of applications. For instance, I would love to have an app that gives me contextual information about the people I am talking with. Specifically about the things that he/she already told me, as their name. I don't see anything inmoral un this.

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the time the landmines were placed the US was at a stalemate with North Korea (and China) - and even the stalemate was pure luck as NATO forces were close to full defeat at many points after China entered the war. US backing did not make their survival a sure thing.

Another interpretation is, that the mines cemented that border.

Yes it did. But the alternative border would have been a unified Korea with the north’s leadership in charge. Whether that is worth the trade off depends on your politics I suppose.

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a source? I’m aware of Microsoft military contracts ie HoloLens, but have no knowledge of facial recognition contracts. Also source for amazon suggesting regulation?

For Amazon, I think that's what I'm thinking of: https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-joins-microsofts-call-rul... For Microsoft, I can't seem to find what I had read anymore, all Google result seem overshadowed by articles of them "calling for regulation". I did find these: https://www.wired.com/story/microsoft-wants-rules-facial-rec... https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-cruel-to-stop-gove... https://www.busine…

Interesting. Thanks for the context.

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#290
post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It exists because the American government (or governments writ large around the world anyway) have had a poor track record of regulating things ethically. For example, the us government has not done a great job of ethically regulating native Americans, or, ethically regulating terrorism abroad, or maybe in more quotidian and economic terms, regulating the sale of loose cigarettes. It baffles the mind that one would w…

Regardless of how well the democracy your government is based on is functioning, I have a rather hard time imagining that a corporation focused on maximizing shareholder profit would do anything better than a piss-poor job for the vast majority of the population.

there's a wide amount of space between 'regulation by government' and 'regulation by corporations'
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