Facial recognition: It’s time for action • Hacker News Board

Re: Facial recognition: It’s time for action

#11

Post by geephroh » Fri, Dec 07, 2018, 5:47 PM UTC

This is a laudable first step in advocacy for real regulation of a technology that already has huge impacts on privacy and civil society. I was in the room for one of the meetings with Microsoft's senior leadership as a representative of a Seattle-based civil liberties group. While our coalition would like to see MS go further, it was quite clear that they take their commitment to corporate responsibility and ethics around the AI issue very seriously. In particular, they seemed to understand our concerns about how facial recognition technologies can magnify existing biases in our criminal justice system.

This stands in stark contrast to the meeting I attended on Tuesday with Amazon's general counsel regarding their Rekognition service. There was a near complete rejection of the idea that mass deployment of surveillance technologies in today's largely unregulated environment posed any danger to civil society. He also denied that Amazon had any responsibility for the negative impacts of their AI/ML technologies, or role to play in industry efforts to self-regulate.

Re: Facial recognition: It’s time for action

#12

Post by andrepd » Fri, Dec 07, 2018, 5:52 PM UTC

star-trek-fleet wrote: post #8

badminton1 wrote: post #2

Too late for China.

These concerns also apply to China at least to a certain degree (or to a lesser degree from a Western centric perspective) and different emphasis. The point is: whatever being asked for here is to advance a technology for the greater good of the society, and that's government's responsibility. It has little to do with China or geopolitical tensions. At the end of day, everyone nation needs to choose the right path fo…

That relativism is preposterous. China's regime is one of the most repressive and overpowering in existence today, and its citizens some of the least free people in the world. You cannot trivialise this or chalk it up as "nations defending against believed threats", because then everything is okay (Hitler was only building defences against the Jews they believed to be a threat, etc.).

Re: Facial recognition: It’s time for action

#13

Post by onemoresoop » Fri, Dec 07, 2018, 5:52 PM UTC

colordrops wrote: post #9

I don't understand how this could be realistically regulated. It's passive technology and its use can't be detected. It's like trying to stop people from thinking.

Of course this could be regulated. It depends who owns this technology and what access they into people's info. This is as passive as detecting's a person's face but linking it to information about this person is where regulation should take place.

Re: Facial recognition: It’s time for action

#14

Post by hulton » Fri, Dec 07, 2018, 5:55 PM UTC

Facial recognition: Paving the way for tyrannical abuse.

Re: Facial recognition: It’s time for action

#15

Post by qwerty456127 » Fri, Dec 07, 2018, 6:04 PM UTC

Governments are the first in the line to abuse facial recognition.

Now as CCTV cams are everywhere, everybody should have a right to wear a mask everywhere without getting discriminated.

Re: Facial recognition: It’s time for action

#16

Post by benwerd » Fri, Dec 07, 2018, 6:04 PM UTC

geephroh wrote: post #11

This is a laudable first step in advocacy for real regulation of a technology that already has huge impacts on privacy and civil society. I was in the room for one of the meetings with Microsoft's senior leadership as a representative of a Seattle-based civil liberties group. While our coalition would like to see MS go further, it was quite clear that they take their commitment to corporate responsibility and ethics…

> This stands in stark contrast to the meeting I attended on Tuesday with Amazon's general counsel regarding their Rekognition service.

And I think that cuts to the core of this: this is an anti-Amazon move. Nonetheless, I do also think it's a pro-consumer, pro-civil liberties stance. It's also a recognition that the tide is turning with respect to consumers and privacy; here, Microsoft is getting ahead of this changing trend and establishing that they're on the right side of it. Amazon is going to find itself hurting on several levels next year, as legislation likely finds its way onto the books and the consumer tide changes further.

Re: Facial recognition: It’s time for action

#17

Post by dwaltrip » Fri, Dec 07, 2018, 6:05 PM UTC

colordrops wrote: post #9

I don't understand how this could be realistically regulated. It's passive technology and its use can't be detected. It's like trying to stop people from thinking.

It requires physical infrastructure beyond the human body, unlike thinking.

Re: Facial recognition: It’s time for action

#18

Post by dontreact » Fri, Dec 07, 2018, 6:05 PM UTC

This is the first instance I've seen of the tech industry calling for regulation. I admire this and the idea that people running a corporation can understand that despite their best intentions, in the long run the corporation will act to maximize profit via legal means, even if an action is not in the best interest of society. And so in some cases we need to make certain things illegal. I would love to see a company do this sort of thing for a broad set of tax loopholes as well, for example.

Re: Facial recognition: It’s time for action

#19

Post by vertexFarm » Fri, Dec 07, 2018, 6:06 PM UTC

colordrops wrote: post #9

I don't understand how this could be realistically regulated. It's passive technology and its use can't be detected. It's like trying to stop people from thinking.

You could say the same about a credit card skimmer on an ATM. It's passive, right? It's just a sensor that sits there and absorbs people's data. I don't think this argument makes a lot of sense.

The point is, there needs to be some law and order in place so that when people abuse this tech to harm people and society and get caught, there's some precedent to stop them and punish them. It doesn't matter if the technology is passive. The intent and action to use it to harm people are not passive and are not analogous to thought crime at all.

There is dire need for regulation with a lot of emerging technologies right now. We're building systems with enormous power which can break human society if misused. I think the intangibility and "passivity" of this tech (or at least how it is perceived) gives us a very false sense of security. Like how a few decades ago very few average people could understand how the internet might have a great impact on society. Obviously they aren't thinking that way anymore.

Check out Charles Stross's speech at C3 about regulatory lag relative to the the accelerated nature of tech growth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmIgJ64z6Y4

Re: Facial recognition: It’s time for action

#20

Post by geephroh » Fri, Dec 07, 2018, 6:13 PM UTC

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #7

zamalek wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regulation isn't the same thing as prohibition. Biometric sign-in wouldn't be covered by their suggestions. This is probably because biometric sign-in is not inherently abuse of AI/ML. It certainly can be though, but covering that would require prohibiting AI/ML in its entirety, even at home or in academia.

>Regulation isn't the same thing as prohibition True, but it’s almost always the first step in prohibition. Which isn’t to say I think prohibition possible in this case. Just that asking for government involvement is at very best a double edged sword. As far as I know, the Azure Facial Recogition API goes well beyond signing in to things.

I would recommend reading Oren Etzioni's piece in this month's Communications of the ACM, "Should AI Technology Be Regulated?: Yes, and Here's How."[1] He lays out some very specific, practical ways that regulation can work, while minimizing impacts on innovation.

[1] https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2018/12/232893-point-should-a...