Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facial recognition: It’s time for action

blogs.microsoft.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 281 posts

Re: Facial recognition: It’s time for action

#111

Post by vkou »

This is a time for action, not just for facial recognition, but for every algorithm.

Every decision made by an algorithm should make its inputs clear, its criteria for interpreting those inputs clear, and its judgement to be disputable. If you can't get your black-box neural network to do so, then perhaps it shouldn't be making life-changing decisions for other people.

There's a startup that's doing sentiment analysis of social media posts, to measure how 'risky' a babysitter is - ad likely does so in a biased manner. [1]

It's illegal to use such a system, for purposes of vetting an employee, yet their entire business model revolves around families using them to vet babysitters.

[1] https://gizmodo.com/predictim-claims-its-ai-can-flag-risky-b...

Re: Facial recognition: It’s time for action

#112

Post by JaRail »

benwerd wrote: post #16
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 chang…

I'm not convinced the US will be passing much of anything in the next two-years. Passing pro-privacy regulation? Seems very unlikely to me. Microsoft should engage with Canada and the EU where technology/privacy regulation is gaining traction.

Re: Facial recognition: It’s time for action

#113

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

freehunter wrote: post #99
vorpalhex wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. For a period of time, there was a lot of chatter about all developers having some kind of professional oath, like doctors. Many of the approaches that were taken have issues (preclude working on smart weapons program or legal surveillance). I wonder if what we…

I'm not arguing for or against that oath, but that would 100% kill Open Source dead the minute it becomes a requirement. Absolutely no one would share their code if they could be held responsible for its misuse.

Yep. How much do you want to bet that the Chinese surveillance systems that target the Uighur run on some version of Linux? I bet that they have some parts that are written Python, Java, Javascript, C or C++ for which they use an open source compiler.

Re: Facial recognition: It’s time for action

#114

Post by pauloppenheim »

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…

> 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.

Which group?

Re: Facial recognition: It’s time for action

#115

Post by phkahler »

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 is a laudable first step in advocacy for real regulation of a technology...

Perhaps I'm jaded, but I don't agree at all. They're trying to get it regulated so they can be creepy without fear. One of the first "good" uses listed was finding 3000 children. "Think of the children" is a common rallying cry for evil. Nothing else mentioned was really relevant.

The line IMHO needs to be drawn at anything that you'd call stalking if it were done by a human. If a store wants to recognize me as a prior visitor, that's fine because an actual employee might do the same. But when my presence (just my presence, not even my purchase history) is shared among more than one location, that's like someone following me around. Stalking. This tracking of people and creating databases about them is at its essence a form of automated cyber stalking and should be illegal. The "societal benefits" of this are nothing more than claiming what's good for corporations is good for society. It is not. Please stop pretending this shit is OK.

Re: Facial recognition: It’s time for action

#116

Post by narag »

vinay427 wrote: post #60
PaulKeeble wrote: post #26

Biometrics are creeping into everyday life. One of my local gyms this week switched to requiring fingerprints or you were barred from access. Another local gym uses facial recognition for entrance, although you can choose to have a member card instead if you ask for it directly, they don't list it as an option. Thankfully in the EU we have GDPR. It considers biometrics as a similar sensitivity to medical data, so unl…

Sort of a tangent, but I wonder if there are any EU countries that have mandatory biometric ID cards. After a cursory (5-10 minute) search I found countries that either used to have ID cards but currently don't, used to have biometric ID cards but currently don't require biometrics, or have biometric ID cards that are optional. It does seem likely that in the future some country will, if it hasn't already, concede an…

Spain. I've owned a government issued ID with my fingerprints for forty years. That's no tragedy, believe me. I don't want government to have certain data and I don't want private companies to have other data. If you think about identity as a right, you might start to see things under a different light.

For many private actions companies demand ID number. That reduces identity theft to a bad movie plot.

Re: Facial recognition: It’s time for action

#117

Post by pradn »

dontreact wrote: post #18

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…

Adding new regulations for emerging technologies can reduce uncertainty. Why invest in something if you don't know if the government will curtail it in the future?

Re: Facial recognition: It’s time for action

#118

Post by tokyodude »

Nikaoto wrote: post #59
seanf wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My gym also uses facial recognition, but does it via a person sitting behind a desk checking that my member ID matches my face. I don't think many people are uncomfortable with this process, and this biometric method has been used for a long time.

Yes, but that person can't copy your biometric data stored in their brain, convert it to a standardized format, and distribute it to millions of other devices.

not yet but that day is coming soon.

https://after-on.com/episodes-31-60/039

Re: Facial recognition: It’s time for action

#120

Post by zjaffee »

PaulKeeble wrote: post #26

Biometrics are creeping into everyday life. One of my local gyms this week switched to requiring fingerprints or you were barred from access. Another local gym uses facial recognition for entrance, although you can choose to have a member card instead if you ask for it directly, they don't list it as an option. Thankfully in the EU we have GDPR. It considers biometrics as a similar sensitivity to medical data, so unl…

There already is regulation around storing biometrics in a few states, Ohio and Texas if I remember correctly, and in turn, most national companies avoid storing this data all together because of the risk it causes should people move between those states.
Post reply on HN