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Amazon defeated Rekognition shareholder revolt by a large margin

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Re: Amazon defeated Rekognition shareholder revolt by a large margin

#51
post #23
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you don't have axiomatic beliefs, then where do your beliefs come from? Some abstract feeling? Whatever "feels" right? Clearly (to me at least), you need a system of axiomatic beliefs. If your axioms don't form a coherent system (i.e you can prove a contradiction), then you really don't believe anything at all. It's surprising to me that very few people think about morality this way. Everyone has a different view…

> If you don't have axiomatic beliefs, then where do your beliefs come from? Some abstract feeling? Whatever "feels" right?

The answer to your first question is "oftentimes, yes" to the second two.

There is this pervasive myth held by people who tend to gravitate towards "functional" fields like ours--that is, technology, math, the logical sciences, and so on--that the human existence can be distilled into a series of logical statements that can be evaluated at different times and, given the same inputs, will always produce the same outputs. (It's the same origin as the myth of the "perfectly rational actor" in economic systems that makes a lot of assumptions that are invalid in the context of how people truly function.) This myth misses a key thing about humans: thinking animals are not computers.

What feels right or what beliefs someone holds can and usually do change over time as someone's existence progresses and new experiences are had. This is where some of our greatest benefits, like the ability to experience art in new and different ways depending on the context or situation or even just our mood, and some of our greatest tragedies, like holding one set of people to be negatively different based on an arbitrary criteria, originate. Saying that if someone's beliefs can't be reduced to "code" causes them to be invalid is against the human condition.

Re: Amazon defeated Rekognition shareholder revolt by a large margin

#52
post #6

I’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…

Due to some recent health issues, my Dad's driver license was temporarily revoked. He can't drive again until his doctor decides it's safe. So now my step mother is doing all the driving and anytime they go somewhere, they get pulled over by the police. This is a consequence of police cameras and software I had never thought of before and I have mixed feelings about it. I don't think there are any easy answers.

Can you elaborate? Are you saying the police in your area have facial recognition and pull over any car where the driver isn't who the car is registered to? I'm confused.

Re: Amazon defeated Rekognition shareholder revolt by a large margin

#54
post #41
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

> They will provide a concrete thing against which to test for bias and improve against. The history of junk forensic science has pretty clearly demonstrated that nobody in law enforcement cares about testing their biases, or improving the processes. If it gets them results, they'll use it.

Law enforcement is general is not good at self-accountability. That accountability has to be rigorously enforced from the outside.

With algorithms, I think it can be done... but given how subtle the negative effects can be, the process must be stringent and err on the side of caution. In other words, any algorithm should be assumed to be biased until proven otherwise, and with a relatively high bar at that. There should be clear technical standards for what constitutes a valid proof. The testing process should be reproducible by third parties. And there should be a straightforward way to challenge either the process itself, or its results in any particular case.

In practice, given how low our bar for law enforcement accountability is today in other cases - including those where people die or are badly hurt - I'd say that we need to fix those issues first before talking about face recognition and its regulation in this context. And until then, it should be off-limits, because the potential for abuse is so high.

Re: Amazon defeated Rekognition shareholder revolt by a large margin

#55
post #23
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you don't have axiomatic beliefs, then where do your beliefs come from? Some abstract feeling? Whatever "feels" right? Clearly (to me at least), you need a system of axiomatic beliefs. If your axioms don't form a coherent system (i.e you can prove a contradiction), then you really don't believe anything at all. It's surprising to me that very few people think about morality this way. Everyone has a different view…

The problem with trying to get to a elegant set of moral axioms is that human morality is a product of multiple conflicting and contradictory goals compiled and obfuscated by evolution, a mother of all one-way optimization processes. Confound it with the fact that most of those goals are not of individuals but of genes and of gene groups. We are mere executors in that regard.

At best you could distill down to multiple separate self-consistent trees of moral rules and model individual humans as sets of weights for those.

Re: Amazon defeated Rekognition shareholder revolt by a large margin

#56

Considering the hellscape that is working in an Amazon warehouse I'm amazed anyone thought it was going to pass. A company that makes its employees piss in bottles doesn't give a damn about the slow erosion of American privacy rights.

No offense here, just giving my thoughts.

Americans haven’t had privacy rights in a while and while the technology is new and fancy, American citizens haven’t been as free as they think they are in a while considering PRISM, border control checks that include your fingerprints and have the right to demand access your personal devices...

Re: Amazon defeated Rekognition shareholder revolt by a large margin

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Due to some recent health issues, my Dad's driver license was temporarily revoked. He can't drive again until his doctor decides it's safe. So now my step mother is doing all the driving and anytime they go somewhere, they get pulled over by the police. This is a consequence of police cameras and software I had never thought of before and I have mixed feelings about it. I don't think there are any easy answers.

Can you elaborate? Are you saying the police in your area have facial recognition and pull over any car where the driver isn't who the car is registered to? I'm confused.

He probably means police knows registered owner of that car shouldn't drive and stop it to check who is driving.

Re: Amazon defeated Rekognition shareholder revolt by a large margin

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not arguing for or against computers vs humans, but your argument is puzzling to me.

Computer systems are accountable, changeable, and cross-examinable. Arguably more so than humans.

I do stipulate that computer systems can be racist or otherwise biased and can be "just wrong".

Re: Amazon defeated Rekognition shareholder revolt by a large margin

#59
post #7

Earlier 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?

You are aware that AI programs reflect the prejudices of the organizations that develop them?

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6334/183.full

Re: Amazon defeated Rekognition shareholder revolt by a large margin

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Due to some recent health issues, my Dad's driver license was temporarily revoked. He can't drive again until his doctor decides it's safe. So now my step mother is doing all the driving and anytime they go somewhere, they get pulled over by the police. This is a consequence of police cameras and software I had never thought of before and I have mixed feelings about it. I don't think there are any easy answers.

Can you elaborate? Are you saying the police in your area have facial recognition and pull over any car where the driver isn't who the car is registered to? I'm confused.

I think it's just an ALPR system. The car is registered in my Dad's name and since his license is suspended, the machine in the cruiser tells the officer to stop the car.
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