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

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

#61

Post by hooverd » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 5:15 PM UTC

freedomben wrote: post #34

gumballindie wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just tell folks on the right that ai is going to take their rights, freedoms and guns and let them run with it. I am not joking, the only way to "wake" people up is to leverage those that, oddly enough, have predicted many of the upcoming changes. The issues with their conspiracy theories are with the how, whom, and why. There's no cabal of folks injecting people with microcips to control them and covid wasn't it. It…

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…

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

#62

Post by rqtwteye » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 5:16 PM UTC

When will people learn that companies will almost always sell stuff as long as it’s legal and profitable. They have no morals. If we declined into a dictatorship they would sell equipment for total surveillance and oppression. If we don’t make it illegal to pollute they will pollute if they think it makes money.

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

#63

Post by opless » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 5:19 PM UTC

MrQuincle wrote: post #47

If this article is concerned about ethics at IBM https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust might be an interesting read for people who haven't yet.

I came to post the same thing.

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

#64

Post by unnah » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 5:21 PM UTC

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.

Maybe they caught on with all the youngsters who call software and AI stuff "tech" instead of technology, and make a clear distinction between the two.

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

#65

Post by quacked » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 5:21 PM UTC

rqtwteye wrote: post #62

When will people learn that companies will almost always sell stuff as long as it’s legal and profitable. They have no morals. If we declined into a dictatorship they would sell equipment for total surveillance and oppression. If we don’t make it illegal to pollute they will pollute if they think it makes money.

I believe people should take care to add "men and women at" before talking about companies. Companies and corporations are abstractions. There are real people taking these actions.

- "Men and women at IBM promised to back off facial recognition, then signed a $70M contract for it"

- "Men and women would sell equipment for total surveillance and oppression"

etc.

The reason I think this is important is that there's actually a very small number of people relative to the general population that are capable of producing this technology. It's easy to be angry at the suits, or at the broad abstraction "IBM" for enabling this, but the fact of the matter is that there are spineless cowards out there getting up every morning to go and build facial recognition software. They deserve the ire of thinking people. No matter what the era is, there will be sociopaths running large organizations looking to control everyone, but these days there's a huge coterie of nerds getting paid handsomely to help.

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

#66

Post by popcalc » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 5:26 PM UTC

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.

>many people outside wearing Hijabs that cover your full face in the future

I'd assume they would be seen as a freak by the average person, in the same way people under the age of 60 who don't own a smartphone are today.

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

#67

Post by oaththrowaway » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 5:28 PM UTC

rqtwteye wrote: post #62

When will people learn that companies will almost always sell stuff as long as it’s legal and profitable. They have no morals. If we declined into a dictatorship they would sell equipment for total surveillance and oppression. If we don’t make it illegal to pollute they will pollute if they think it makes money.

IBM already helped the Nazis in the Holocaust. They never had morals to start with. If we elected Hitler's reanimated corpse, IBM would gladly help again

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

#68

Post by tw04 » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 5:35 PM UTC

MaxikCZ wrote: post #56

willcipriano wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 differ…

It seems EXTREMELY unlikely that Cray would be unable to meet performance requirements and promises. They've consistently done so for decades in all manner of government and private institutions.

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

#69

Post by tw04 » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 5:37 PM UTC

Kwpolska wrote: post #57

wredue wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

They will never sell off mainframe. That's the one thing they can reliably tweak to hit their numbers and/or push other software that people don't want as a "bundle".

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

#70

Post by cpeterso » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 5:38 PM UTC

popcalc wrote: post #66

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.

>many people outside wearing Hijabs that cover your full face in the future I'd assume they would be seen as a freak by the average person, in the same way people under the age of 60 who don't own a smartphone are today.

COVID-19 made wearing face masks normal. No one needs to know if you’re wearing a mask to protect against COVID or to protect your privacy.