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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

#71

Post by guuhv »

sigkrieger wrote: post #56
Causality1 wrote: post #26

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...

So like in European countries, only that in European countries you have to give up your fingerprints when you turn 14, and it's mandatory.

Re: Amazon defeated Rekognition shareholder revolt by a large margin

#72

Post by acct1771 »

criddell wrote: post #12
mruts wrote: 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.

Public transportation is a good answer, for this specific example, although little you personally can do about that today.

Re: Amazon defeated Rekognition shareholder revolt by a large margin

#73

Post by k__ »

rapind wrote: post #64
k__ wrote: post #53

Maybe masks become a thing again? Venecian style.

Won't work. You'll be matched on gait, the way you carry yourself. This scares the shit out of me, but what scares me more is that it doesn't also scare the shit out of everyone else.

What changes your gait? A heavier mask?

Re: Amazon defeated Rekognition shareholder revolt by a large margin

#74

Post by vonmoltke »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #30
devit wrote: post #24

Earlier 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.

> Why do they do that instead of abstaining? Suppose index funds collectively own 80% of the shares. If they don't vote or do something that causes their vote to equal the other shareholders, someone else can buy 10% of the shares and effectively have majority voting power, or even fewer than that since most likely some of the other non-index fund owners wouldn't vote either. The problem is that you need somebody who…

> Suppose index funds collectively own 80% of the shares. If they don't vote or do something that causes their vote to equal the other shareholders, someone else can buy 10% of the shares and effectively have majority voting power, or even fewer than that since most likely some of the other non-index fund owners wouldn't vote either.

Instead, they vote the board recommendations, disenfranchise all the individual shareholders, and rubber stamp almost anything the board wants. I'm not sure that's any better.

Re: Amazon defeated Rekognition shareholder revolt by a large margin

#75

Post by JohnFen »

int_19h wrote: post #54
vkou wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 sho…

> That accountability has to be rigorously enforced from the outside.

I agree. But the reason that we don't have that right now isn't related to whether or not computers are involved, and introducing algorithms won't solve that situation.

The reason that police accountability is weak is political.

Re: Amazon defeated Rekognition shareholder revolt by a large margin

#76

Post by JohnFen »

aey wrote: post #48
vkou wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

No, you can challenge the validity of the risk assessment. Bayes is used in jury trials all the time. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_inference#Applicati... What we have today is institutional racism based on people’s gut reactions. An NN can be tested and shown that given all other factors it risks race, or any other protected class higher than it should.

> What we have today is institutional racism based on people’s gut reactions.

Institutional racism is not based on people's gut reactions. Institutional racism is based on flawed algorithms. Not computer algorithms in this case, but bureaucratic ones.

I don't see how a flawed computer algorithm would be any easier to correct than a flawed bureaucratic algorithm.

Re: Amazon defeated Rekognition shareholder revolt by a large margin

#77

Post by JohnFen »

Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #47

I had used Amazon Rekognition in our dating product extensively for moderation till Aug 2018, it was in-accurate for people with darker skin often with wrong gender and age identification. I had contacted them regarding these issues and was told that they are working with new models. I haven't tested it recently to see if the situation had improved. I didn't use the Face Recognition API for privacy reasons, I assume…

> I would be very worried for some innocent to be wrongly tagged by the system.

You should. Law enforcement in particular doesn't think that false positives are that big of a deal (after all, they argue, all that would cause is a cop to talk to the wrong person). They prefer to accept more false positives if that means fewer false negatives.

I disagree entirely with that.

Re: Amazon defeated Rekognition shareholder revolt by a large margin

#78

Post by JohnFen »

mruts wrote: 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…

> Moreover, many cities are already blanketed in thousands of government cameras and facial recognition doesn’t seem like anymore an abridgement of our privacy than the cameras alone.

It sure does to me.

Re: Amazon defeated Rekognition shareholder revolt by a large margin

#79

Post by mushufasa »

est31 wrote: post #68
mushufasa wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shareholder primacy is in an interesting place. With the rise of index funds also comes the rise of the idea of a 'universal owner' solving the tragedy of the commons.[0] If you own a piece of every company, like Vanguard or BlackRock, your funds benefit when the whole economy does well. Your incentive is to advance society, not to promote any one company at the expense of the others. In that way, you internalize ext…

> If you own a piece of every company, like Vanguard or BlackRock, your funds benefit when the whole economy does well. Index funds only target top companies. Externalities tend to b eenefit those top companies while harming little companies as well as poor people, often not even in the same country.

Index funds are limited to public companies, which implies a certain size. That said, across a fund manager's assets are a lot of small cap and mid cap funds, which explicitly target smaller companies. In that sense, index funds do not only target the top companies.

If you mean top as in performance, that is also not the case. Index funds are based on the premise that they do not aggressively pick winners and losers within a sector, in contrast to active funds. This lets index funds hire fewer staff and charge fewer fees. Economists generally agree that over time, index funds outperform active funds on a risk-adjusted basis after accounting for fees.

Re: Amazon defeated Rekognition shareholder revolt by a large margin

#80

Post by philwelch »

eloff wrote: post #9
mruts wrote: 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…

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.

To what extent is there such a thing as a "right not to be recognized"? If there is such a right, can it not be exercised--against machine as well as man--simply by wearing a mask?
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