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Google contractors reportedly targeted homeless people for facial recognition

theverge.com

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Re: Google contractors reportedly targeted homeless people for facial recognition

#111

Post by fiter »

jeromebaek wrote: post #94
username90 wrote: post #36

I remember the outrage when people discovered that Google's AI wasn't properly trained on black faces. It makes sense that they try hard to avoid that happening again by paying black people to let Google scan their faces. It is not unethical to try to diversify your training data. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/11710136/Googl... Anyway, this part sounds directly illegal, seems like it was just Randstad…

There is a premise in this deduction, which Randstad made: 1. We need darker faces in our training data. 2. Therefore, gather training data from homeless people. How do you go from 1 to 2? With the premise "darker-faced people tend to be homeless". This is not necessarily a false premise -- statistically, it is true, and it is a reflection of systemic injustice -- but the outrage is not whether it's true or false; th…

In the article it said Randstad targeted homeless people because they were less likely to talk to the media.

Re: Google contractors reportedly targeted homeless people for facial recognition

#112

Post by kapuasuite »

kevingadd wrote: post #108
kapuasuite wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would make it “not objectionable?”

For starters, telling the people what you're actually doing and maybe paying them more than 5 bucks.

You can argue that lying would be objectionable, but we’re talking about something with essentially no consequences here. As for the fee, how much are their faces worth beyond a fee they were obviously already willing to accept?

Re: Google contractors reportedly targeted homeless people for facial recognition

#113

Post by TallGuyShort »

kevingadd wrote: post #108
kapuasuite wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would make it “not objectionable?”

For starters, telling the people what you're actually doing and maybe paying them more than 5 bucks.

Okay my point was that the article very early calls out "targeting people of color" and only addresses that much later, clearly trying to get attention on that aspect. Telling people what you're doing and how much you pay them is completely unrelated to Google telling them to target people of color, though I agree lying is scummy.

But since you brought it up, how much money could they have paid to make you not feel like they're exploiting the homeless? You could have everyone read and sign complicated legalese consent forms and really just end up not giving a bunch of homeless people some money.

edit: Presumably this is happening on public property, so they have a right to take people's pictures anyway. I don't know what the laws are regarding rights to use people's "likenesses" the way many entertainment venues tell you they can, but I'd expect using it for model training is going to have a pretty low bar. If they weren't lying they're paying someone to look at a camera for 5 seconds. Hell, I'd agree to that and I'm not even concerned about how I'm going to pay for my dinner tonight.

Re: Google contractors reportedly targeted homeless people for facial recognition

#114

Post by gruez »

kevingadd wrote: post #107
ry_ry wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't matter, I suspect - It works within the narrative and implies they have something to hide. It's good /tabloid/ journalism, and poor investigative journalism. Randstad are very much the former.

Historically if you wait multiple days / weeks to give them a chance to reply they just do an end-run and publish puff pieces in major outlets to try and defuse your article. There are multiple cases of this in the past year. It's either investigative journalism or it's not. How long you wait for comment has nothing to do with that. Do you really think this is equivalent to tabloids posting faked photos of some movie…

>There are multiple cases of this in the past year.

Would you care to list some examples? I can't think of any.

Re: Google contractors reportedly targeted homeless people for facial recognition

#115

Post by tobib »

aantix wrote: post #100
tobib wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about that. It's about whether we accept corporate arrogance to make decisions on behalf of a vulnerable demographic.

Billions that participate are now considered "vulnerable"?

Sorry, that was referring to the homeless population from the article.

Re: Google contractors reportedly targeted homeless people for facial recognition

#116

Post by tobib »

NoodleIncident wrote: post #77
tobib wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your point? You choose to do it because you don't care about giving your face picture to someone, fine. You're in a totally different position, financially independent I assume, you can weigh your options. A homeless person might not be in a situation like that. They're much more vulnerable and possibly willing to do things out of sheer desperation. Things they wouldn't do if they were in a different situation…

Don't wear yourself out moving those goalposts. First you accuse him of lying about what he said; then when he offers proof, suddenly it doesn't matter whether he's willing to do it himself or not.

It wasn't my intention to accuse them of lying. I guess I genuinely don't understand what their point is.

All I (unsuccessfully) tried to point out is that the two scenarios are different.

Re: Google contractors reportedly targeted homeless people for facial recognition

#118

Post by ry_ry »

kevingadd wrote: post #107
ry_ry wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't matter, I suspect - It works within the narrative and implies they have something to hide. It's good /tabloid/ journalism, and poor investigative journalism. Randstad are very much the former.

Historically if you wait multiple days / weeks to give them a chance to reply they just do an end-run and publish puff pieces in major outlets to try and defuse your article. There are multiple cases of this in the past year. It's either investigative journalism or it's not. How long you wait for comment has nothing to do with that. Do you really think this is equivalent to tabloids posting faked photos of some movie…

That's a disingenuous comparison.

How long did they wait before publishing? We don't know, it doesn't matter. Simply stating that they didn't respond had the desired effect, and - as you rightly pointed out - does nothing to diffuse the story. The implication of the story being that not only are Google potentially taking advantage of vulnerable people to further their unspoken, morally grey agenda, but it may also have a racially questionable angle.

Alternately, they wanted to train their facial recognition dataset with certain characteristics on the cheap.

That in itself is interesting, but probably wouldn't get as many clicks. It's bottom drawer "I leave you, dear reader, to draw your own conclusions" stuff.

Re: Google contractors reportedly targeted homeless people for facial recognition

#119

Post by JohnFen »

kapuasuite wrote: post #99
JohnFen wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I guess you're damned if you do, damned if you don't. This is not a case of that. Google (or its contractor) could easily have done this in a way that was not objectionable. They simply decided not to.

What would make it “not objectionable?”

Obtaining actual informed consent.

Re: Google contractors reportedly targeted homeless people for facial recognition

#120

Post by ehsankia »

cwkoss wrote: post #101
dclusin wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like they were needlessly dishonest and misleading and that being truthful would have gotten more people on board. Saying something along the lines of "hey, we noticed our facial recognition algorithms don't work so well for African Americans. Could you help us fix that by letting us take a picture of your face? We'll give you a $5 gift card for your troubles."

That seems pretty clear. Verge title is kind of clickbait by using `Google Contractors` rather than `Randstad` though. The "and/or" in "it sounds like Google and/or its contractor may have been taking some extreme and unsavory shortcuts to cash in." is clearly use of weasel words, the journalist was unable to substantiate the allegation that Google was aware of this unethical practice. Sloppy reporting demonstrating…

That's still much better than the original source (NY Daily Times) which literally just says "Google".
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