I'm surprised to see content from such a high-profile site as the BBC with typographical errors: "The Bloomberg news agency and CNBC are bother reporting that"
Amazon defeated Rekognition shareholder revolt by a large margin
31–40 of 94 posts
Re: Amazon defeated Rekognition shareholder revolt by a large margin
#32I’m not sure how I feel about facial recognition. On one hand, I think code is just information and no piece of information should be illegal to possess. I also think we need to protect our rights with math and code not laws. But I’m not sure that would help against the very real and dystopian future that seems just around the corner. Facial recognition is probably the key cornerstone of said future and I’m not sure…
Human rights are not a mathematical or computer science concept, they are in fact a law concept. I know it's tempting for computer people on hackernews to want to solve problems with the tools of their own domain - but law is exactly the place where rights need to be protected, not code.
> law is exactly the place where rights need to be protected, not code.
It is possible to do two things at once and provide overlapping protection. When something has both technical and legal defenses, that thing is safer than having only one or the other.
Re: Amazon defeated Rekognition shareholder revolt by a large margin
#33Is this really a valid test anymore with 50%+ of outstanding shares being held by index funds? Who actually controls the companies when shareholders don't really exist like they used to? What does shareholder primacy even mean anymore?
Seems like this could be resolved by having index funds just abstain from voting.
Re: Amazon defeated Rekognition shareholder revolt by a large margin
#34I’m not sure how I feel about facial recognition. On one hand, I think code is just information and no piece of information should be illegal to possess. I also think we need to protect our rights with math and code not laws. But I’m not sure that would help against the very real and dystopian future that seems just around the corner. Facial recognition is probably the key cornerstone of said future and I’m not sure…
Dunno why you are downvoted (I assume that's what greyed text means, if not, mea culpa), but that's the world we live in I guess.
I'd say that the more general problem is that we all had privacy at one time due to the difficulties in gathering/parsing/storing. People used to be able to expect that their criminal record was somewhat private, that private conversations in public places were private, that their locations were private. 'Forgotten' can be interchanged for 'private' in these cases.
There was no real protection in terms of law, just in terms of practicality.
The great irony of modern times is that the sea change was schlepped in with the market for advertising, not your local Stasi. Of course, the cops are happy to use it if it exists.
Re: Amazon defeated Rekognition shareholder revolt by a large margin
#35Is this really a valid test anymore with 50%+ of outstanding shares being held by index funds? Who actually controls the companies when shareholders don't really exist like they used to? What does shareholder primacy even mean anymore?
You're right - index funds voting really hurts the process, largely because index funds don't ask their investor base how they should vote. Instead, they default to following corporate recommendations and voting down any shareholder proposals. So really, all those shares are voted according to what corporate management wants, not to what the original retail investors want. It's distorting the power balance in a reall…
As you said, there's literally no formal process for retail investors to communicate to the funds.
This startup organizes retail shareholders to use their rights via petition, e.g. https://www.yourstake.org/ask/vanguard-demand-companies-disc... .
So as a verified shareholder, you can signal your support for various issues, and the startup then arranges a meeting with the fund managers if enough people support the idea.
Re: Amazon defeated Rekognition shareholder revolt by a large margin
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do they do that instead of abstaining? It seems like their duty to the index fund owners is to vote like other shareholders (which is most easily achieved by abstaining) and not like management.
They legally have to vote their shares. Individuals are exempt for that. It's interesting to think about index fund providers incentives: (1) track the market (2) do it very cheaply Voting shares is a cost center with no benefit towards the business. Fund providers don't want to spend time and money to do research on individual proposals, that would be too expensive. So they do the cheapest thing possible and default…
Why not simply allow their beneficial owners to vote on what they should do?
I've building a startup for that -- you can support petitions like https://www.yourstake.org/ask/vanguard-demand-companies-disc...
Re: Amazon defeated Rekognition shareholder revolt by a large margin
#37The solution to this is not "regulate Amazon's facial recognition". It's just "regulate all facial recognition". While that's obviously challenging, targeting Amazon specifically doesn't actually improve the status quo in a lasting way.
Agreed, where do a I sign up. With the proliferation of license plate readers and other surveillance cameras in the last 5 years it's a matter of time before this creeps out to full algorithmic 'risk scores' for when you have encounters with enforcement. For some that may mean just getting shot [0], while they think someone risky might be in the vehicle, based on association. Or other harassment. [0] https://www.lati…
It sounds preferable to calculate risk scores deterministically rather than rely on Law Enforcement's discretion.
Risk scores are computed for every traffic stop, wouldn't you want to take that process away from the office and give it to a computer?
Re: Amazon defeated Rekognition shareholder revolt by a large margin
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed, where do a I sign up. With the proliferation of license plate readers and other surveillance cameras in the last 5 years it's a matter of time before this creeps out to full algorithmic 'risk scores' for when you have encounters with enforcement. For some that may mean just getting shot [0], while they think someone risky might be in the vehicle, based on association. Or other harassment. [0] https://www.lati…
It sounds preferable to calculate risk scores deterministically rather than rely on Law Enforcement's discretion. Risk scores are computed for every traffic stop, wouldn't you want to take that process away from the office and give it to a computer?
No! Because, for some reason that has no basis in reality, people think computers are less biased than humans! They trust computers OVER PEOPLE, even if the computer is racist, or just wrong.
Humans are accountable, changeable, cross-examinable. Computer systems are not. Please do not give enforcement systems over to computer systems, and have the bias calcified forever.
Re: Amazon defeated Rekognition shareholder revolt by a large margin
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed, where do a I sign up. With the proliferation of license plate readers and other surveillance cameras in the last 5 years it's a matter of time before this creeps out to full algorithmic 'risk scores' for when you have encounters with enforcement. For some that may mean just getting shot [0], while they think someone risky might be in the vehicle, based on association. Or other harassment. [0] https://www.lati…
It sounds preferable to calculate risk scores deterministically rather than rely on Law Enforcement's discretion. Risk scores are computed for every traffic stop, wouldn't you want to take that process away from the office and give it to a computer?
It really sounds preferable to me, even if the initial versions of these algorithms are biased. They will provide a concrete thing against which to test for bias and improve against. It is easily verifiable if your changes to an algorithm have removed the bias you are worried about. Conversely it is basically impossible to tell if your training on a human has changed their biases in the field, sort of just having them do their job again and see if they are biased.
Re: Amazon defeated Rekognition shareholder revolt by a large margin
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed, where do a I sign up. With the proliferation of license plate readers and other surveillance cameras in the last 5 years it's a matter of time before this creeps out to full algorithmic 'risk scores' for when you have encounters with enforcement. For some that may mean just getting shot [0], while they think someone risky might be in the vehicle, based on association. Or other harassment. [0] https://www.lati…
It sounds preferable to calculate risk scores deterministically rather than rely on Law Enforcement's discretion. Risk scores are computed for every traffic stop, wouldn't you want to take that process away from the office and give it to a computer?
> Risk scores are computed for every traffic stop, wouldn't you want to take that process away from the office and give it to a computer?
What I want is this process to be cross-examinable. You can't cross-examine an algorithm in any meaningful way at a jury trial. You can't cross-examine a neural network at all.
You know all the bullshit about how police dogs are used to conduct illegal searches, and how you can't cross-examine a dog? It'll be like that, but much, much worse.