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Amazon Employee: We Shouldn’t Sell Facial Recognition Tech to Police

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Re: Amazon Employee: We Shouldn’t Sell Facial Recognition Tech to Police

#121

Post by bsenftner »

Click bait journalism. Pointless article. Bad journalism tricking you for ad dollars with nonsense.

I am a lead software scientist in the Facial Recognition industry. Amazon's ‘Rekognition’ service is a sad, expensive joke. No body takes that software serious. It is poor quality. It is expensive. It is marketed to the consumer public for Amazon's stock, not for actual serious FR use. It is not appropriate for any serious FR use. It's a toy.

I'll say that again for those in the back: it's a TOY, expensive and hardly works.

Re: Amazon Employee: We Shouldn’t Sell Facial Recognition Tech to Police

#122

Post by sjg007 »

kodablah wrote: post #96

> Amazon, where I work, is currently allowing police departments around the country to purchase its facial recognition product, Rekognition, and I and other employees demand that we stop immediately. Ok, nod, nod... > The letter also contained demands to kick Palantir, the software firm that powers much of ICE's deportation and tracking program, off Amazon Web Services and to institute employee oversight for ethical…

[flagged]

Re: Amazon Employee: We Shouldn’t Sell Facial Recognition Tech to Police

#123

Post by prolikewh0a »

dwb wrote: post #64
User23 wrote: post #26

"If we want to lead, we need to make a choice between people and profits." As an AMZN shareholder, I pick profits. Well, growth actually.

How do you justify this ethically?

You can't. Hyper unregulated capitalism in an increasing dog eat dog world leads to a lack of ethics or morals for a quick buck.

Re: Amazon Employee: We Shouldn’t Sell Facial Recognition Tech to Police

#124

Post by sjg007 »

bnt wrote: post #31
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #4

>The letter also contained demands to kick Palantir, the software firm that powers much of ICE’s deportation and tracking program, off Amazon Web Services The number one thing that will make large companies reject cloud computing is any hint that why will be kicked off because their legal business goes against the mores of the US West coast tech workers. If Palantir gets kicked off, how long until these same workers…

Kicking a high-profile account like Palantir off of AWS would probably have a domino effect which would result in pretty much every big player moving to custom data centers (or preparing a plan-b just in case it happens to them).

I mean people used to have data centers before.. and most big players already do have their own data centers.

Re: Amazon Employee: We Shouldn’t Sell Facial Recognition Tech to Police

#125

Post by dsfyu404ed »

turdnagel wrote: post #111

Stopping facial recognition tech is not the solve. The problem is surveillance - that’s what we ought to address.

Agreed.

Software doesn't run oppressive surveillance states. People run oppressive surveillance states.

Re: Amazon Employee: We Shouldn’t Sell Facial Recognition Tech to Police

#126

Post by elicash »

neom wrote: post #77

If I understand correctly, Amazon employees want Amazon to police the police with respect to ethics? Wouldn't lobbying government and educating the public work better?

I only know about this issue because of these Amazon employees.

So I'd say they were QUITE effective at educating the public by taking this stand. We spend half our waking lives at our workplace, and the places we work are often tremendously powerful. The idea that you shouldn't take action as employees seems like giving up a tremendous amount of opportunity at creating change.

Re: Amazon Employee: We Shouldn’t Sell Facial Recognition Tech to Police

#127

Post by PurpleBoxDragon »

bootlooped wrote: post #112
ENOTTY wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless the staff operating the public service receive no compensation at all, then there is profit involved.

If you go down that road, then you would also have to conclude that all prisons are for-profit prisons, since the guards are always paid employees. I think that's misinterpreting or misrepresenting the way "profit" is being used in this sense though.

Is that really an unreasonable conclusion? Even if we ended all private prisons, you could potentially still have unions representing prison workers who would have some of the same lobbying concerns that private prisons possess (lobbying for harsher laws for profit motive, the difference being union member's paycheck and job instead of the companies bottom line). There is also a third group, which is the for-profit companies who are providing services, for a profit, to state owned prisons. These also have the same concerns, as they make more money the more prisoners incarcerated.

Now the three groups aren't equal, but they do exist on the same scale. For profit prisons are, IMO, the worst while the other two groups are of debatable ranking depending upon the size of the relevant organizations.

Re: Amazon Employee: We Shouldn’t Sell Facial Recognition Tech to Police

#128

Post by finnthehuman »

Rainymood wrote: post #46

Hopefully my opinion is not controversial but the tech behind this is really cool. It is equally easy to imagine a future where this tech is helpful and beneficial for all society. It is also equally easy to imagine a dystopian future where this tech is used by evil authoritarian governments. I am personally very conflicted on this issue because the tech is really cool (actual big data machine learning/CV) but can be…

But you’re not describing a double sided blade (that “cuts both ways”), you’re saying that sword making is cool.

Re: Amazon Employee: We Shouldn’t Sell Facial Recognition Tech to Police

#129

Post by fipple »

ENOTTY wrote: post #72

> Regardless of our views on the military, no one should be profiting from “increasing the lethality” of the military. It makes no sense for these two clauses to exist together. If you do not believe that people should profit from increasing the lethality of the military, then you do not believe in the utility of having a military. Especially when the author follows up with this sentence: > We will not silently build…

No, I believe the military should exist but shouldn’t be too good at its job. If the US president knows that 3,000 American soldiers will die doing something, it will make the calculus of doing it very different than if only 3 soldiers would die. This may actually save lives overallx

Re: Amazon Employee: We Shouldn’t Sell Facial Recognition Tech to Police

#130

Post by spaginal »

vorpalhex wrote: post #114
paulcole wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Second, you risk AWS being seen as non-neutral based on the whims of employees' feelings about a company (as opposed to something illegal). There are plenty of legal things that I think it’s fine with being non-neutral on. A private company SHOULD be non-neutral based on the whims of the employees! Who else steers their ship?

Can AWS be non-neutral? Sure, legally and even ethically, that's fine. If AWS is non-neutral, will that hurt their ability to attract clients? Absolutely. I'm the first one in line to abolish ICE, but if AWS starts kicking people they don't like off of AWS I'll also be the first one to stop using it. Sure, we agree on ICE, what about companies that make violent video games? Companies that make firearm accessories?

Why abolish ICE? What specifically is the issue with ICE short of news and celebrities demanding it because it’s in vogue?

They serve a legitimate law enforcement function in our country, which by last check doesn’t have open borders and prosecutes those that cross illegally?

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