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IBM promised to back off facial recognition, then signed a $70M contract for it

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Re: IBM promised to back off facial recognition, then signed a $70M contract for it

#51

Post by geodel »

pyrophane wrote: post #28
paxys wrote: post #4

Who the hell is signing a large contract with IBM and expecting them to deliver working tech? > IBM signed a $69.8 million (£54.7 million) contract with the British government Ah, just good old fashioned grift. Nothing to be concerned about. The money is being spent on executive bonuses and government official kickbacks, not developing facial recognition.

I think the reason for this is probably more: 1. Risk aversion. "Nobody gets fire for buying IBM" still has some truth to it. Even if they don't deliver, the fact that IBM is one of (or the?) largest consulting firms in the world is in itself a defense for selecting them. 2. The government bid process. I don't know how this works in the UK, but in the US you have to jump through a lot of hoops if you want to work on…

At lower level nowadays I see no one gets hired if they are still working on IBM products.

Re: IBM promised to back off facial recognition, then signed a $70M contract for it

#52

Post by rmah »

paxys wrote: post #4

Who the hell is signing a large contract with IBM and expecting them to deliver working tech? > IBM signed a $69.8 million (£54.7 million) contract with the British government Ah, just good old fashioned grift. Nothing to be concerned about. The money is being spent on executive bonuses and government official kickbacks, not developing facial recognition.

$70 mil is not what IBM would consider a large contract. Certainly not large enough to risk actions like kickbacks. Now if it was $700mil, then maybe.

Re: IBM promised to back off facial recognition, then signed a $70M contract for it

#53

Post by tempodox »

supermatt wrote: post #38

“IBM firmly opposes and will not condone uses of any technology, including facial recognition technology offered by other vendors…” They didn’t feel the need to “include” themselves in their definition of “any”

If a pittance of $70M makes IBM go back on their word, they must really be on their last legs.

Re: IBM promised to back off facial recognition, then signed a $70M contract for it

#54

Post by freedomben »

gumballindie wrote: post #45
freedomben wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only problem with that plan is that it's going to warp in ways that make us facepalm, especially because they like to have a named antagonist. Impossible to predict how it would go, but one thought might be that it will turn into "Bill Gates is investing in facial recognition so he can put us all in prison camps" or something. Unfortunately the damage from that will be severe and will probably make everyone on th…

That is a very real risk, but I suspect that's partially because these people have been contanstly berrated or ignored. Let's look at it this way. They felt something was wrong. Couldn't tell what but they felt it was (well some things were obious - massive job losses, ignored by the government and the media, etc). Heck even we, "highly paid" tech workers are now facing the same issues - housing is expensive, corpora…

I agree completely with everything you wrote. The "war" is going to just continue to heat up as long as people are strawmanned, mocked, and dismissed. That hasn't worked out well historically, it's not going to in the future either and it's something I'm very concerned about.

Re: Epstein, if I meant to imply that I thought Epstein did kill himself, that was a mistake. I have no idea of course, but it seems pretty reasonable to me that he didn't...

Re: IBM promised to back off facial recognition, then signed a $70M contract for it

#55

Post by wredue »

willcipriano wrote: post #40
supermatt wrote: post #38

“IBM firmly opposes and will not condone uses of any technology, including facial recognition technology offered by other vendors…” They didn’t feel the need to “include” themselves in their definition of “any”

IBM's solutions are so ancient they are no longer considered technology.

IBM severed most of their ancient technology off in to Kyndryl. They’re pretty much all cloud at this point.

Re: IBM promised to back off facial recognition, then signed a $70M contract for it

#56

Post by MaxikCZ »

willcipriano wrote: post #40
supermatt wrote: post #38

“IBM firmly opposes and will not condone uses of any technology, including facial recognition technology offered by other vendors…” They didn’t feel the need to “include” themselves in their definition of “any”

IBM's solutions are so ancient they are no longer considered technology.

I dont know. My close relative works as infrastructure engineer at major automotive company, and about every 2 years they are buying new computation clusters (think tens to low hundreds thousands of cores, along with network and storage infra). Every time a public tender is held, and every time there are several companies promising to achieve required results with whatever hardware.

Last decade I know of three different firms being selected, where they guaranteed to succeed on speed requirements (some even saying its tested inhouse), only to admit failure after year of trying, taking all their hardware back with no pay. IBM at higher price was selected as backup, and every time was the only firm actually able to deliver on their promises and meet the benchmark requirements.

I often see IBM getting a lot of flak here for whatever reasons, just sharing some counterweight.

Re: IBM promised to back off facial recognition, then signed a $70M contract for it

#57

Post by Kwpolska »

wredue wrote: post #55
willcipriano wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IBM's solutions are so ancient they are no longer considered technology.

IBM severed most of their ancient technology off in to Kyndryl. They’re pretty much all cloud at this point.

Did they sell off mainframes too?

Re: IBM promised to back off facial recognition, then signed a $70M contract for it

#59

Post by n1b0m »

jmclnx wrote: post #58

Funny, some people in the Arab world are fighting required Hijab use. In the US and Europe, with this happening, I could see many people outside wearing Hijabs that cover your full face in the future.

If you’re referring to Iran then they’re Persian not Arab.

Re: IBM promised to back off facial recognition, then signed a $70M contract for it

#60

Post by hooverd »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #49
mattmanser wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've actually worked on a failed-ish (or at least put on pause) development for a government (no names!). There's plenty of other explanations that don't include corruption. Lack of scope, mismanagement, what's developed isn't what they wanted, the people who decided the specs aren't the people using it so it's useless, etc. We actually ended up delivering the first phase of the project (well, the 2nd iteration as th…

I don't argue that they're not also incompetent but I would argue that that incompetence is a side effect of corruption that you're not privy to.

Yeah, you can't just say software fell off a truck like physical goods.
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