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A crashed advertisement reveals logs of a facial recognition system

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Re: A crashed advertisement reveals logs of a facial recognition system

#441

Post by antisthenes »

ctdonath wrote: post #370
treyfitty wrote: post #366

I've sifted through 80% of the comments here, and I couldn't find a mention about the unintended consequences of this technology. Ethical vs. Unethical, Pro-Privacy vs. Against Privacy are the two common discussion points. I, however, think the bigger problem here is that there's a very non-zero probability that this technology may cause unintended consequences simply by relying on false/inaccurate data. For one, I w…

"Hello Mr. Yakamoto and welcome back to the GAP!" - Minority Report , after protagonist (Tom Cruise, clearly not Asian) buys black-market replacement eyeballs to avoid retina-based security

The future is beginning to look a lot like the worst parts of Ghost in the Shell, Minority Report and Brave New World combined.

But I would love to come back to this post in 2050 and be proven completely wrong!

Re: A crashed advertisement reveals logs of a facial recognition system

#442

Post by throwaway91111 »

fixermark wrote: post #435
throwaway91111 wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Woah, i'd give away a lot of information for a candy bar. I get nothing from ads; they lower the quality of everyone's life.

Often, you're more-or-less getting the content surrounding the ads from the ads, albeit indirectly. My local gas station upgraded its pumps recently to allow it to play video ads on the screen used to do the credit card transaction. I don't doubt it's partially the reason that gas station is still operational when similar non-franchises vendors in town have gone under.

Often times i don't give a damn about the content it sponsors. I'd much rather be able to do my business without being assaulted by ads, which often have little to do with reality, and often act as an alienating and dehumanizing force. It's very difficult to see the good.

I would rather have no content than ad-supported content. of course, nobody will ever offer that! You can't sell ads if people can opt out, and too many big players think they're the only way.

Thank gas station should have charged more or folded than sell you shit you don't want, won't want, and will never spend money on.

Re: A crashed advertisement reveals logs of a facial recognition system

#443

Post by lawless123 »

794CD01 wrote: post #383
asher_ wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this scummy exactly? If a salesperson was to try to sell to you in a store, they would take into account how you appear and act to tailor the sale. There's nothing wrong with that. Why is it suddenly bad if a machine does it?

Most humans today are prejudiced against nonorganic life due to not growing up interacting with anyone but other meatbags. There's a huge double standard in place that makes it somehow wrong for computers to do what humans have been doing without objection for decades or millenia.

It's because people view the AI as an infallible machine that records everything, which is much more intimidating than the gut instincts of a salesperson.

Re: A crashed advertisement reveals logs of a facial recognition system

#444

Post by bjl »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #437
bjl wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way this could possibly be considered ethical is if you get informed consent from every single person the system is analysing. If you provided each person with a detailed explanation of what the data would be used for, and required them to opt-in before collecting it, that would be fine. Otherwise, what you're doing is deeply unethical.

That's at the heart of it - is examining a person in public with automated tools, unethical? Just saying it is, isn't a compelling argument. The FBI can use automated tools for surveillance - which doesn't speak to ethics directly but indirectly, as we hope ethics drove those rules. I can sit in my private store and observer people out the window all day, even take notes. That's not unethical; that's a sociological e…

Manipulating people on a mass scale without their informed consent has always been considered unethical; its on you if you're trying to argue that its not.

And you're 'but what if a person does it' arguments are irrelevant - there's a clear difference of scale between the massively automated systems we're discussing and a single person with a pencil and paper.

Re: A crashed advertisement reveals logs of a facial recognition system

#445

Post by spangry »

mostlyskeptical wrote: post #407
spangry wrote: post #404

I'm a little surprised about the HN reaction on this one. You guys didn't seem to care about collection of passive biometrics a year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11172652 . What's changed?

That's the one benefit of Trump getting elected: half of the US cares about civil liberties and privacy again.

I suspect you're right; I've noticed we also like the 'news' media again. I guess it's only a problem when it's not "your side" invading people's privacy, spreading false propaganda, destroying liberal democracy etc. etc.

Re: A crashed advertisement reveals logs of a facial recognition system

#446

Post by forgottenpass »

fixermark wrote: post #418
rpeden wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. This isn't new. It's everywhere . The cameras retailers use with their surveillance systems are coming with facial recognition built in now. [1] And lots of retailers, banks, etc, are using systems that track people's visits across multiple locations. [2] You'll see a lot of these systems being sold as fraud/loss prevention solutions. The reason for this is that it's a relatively easy sell this way - customer…

That's always going to be tempting, and the only real tractable solution is for society to have a larger conversation on the ethics so the law can catch up with it. Note that some ethical consensus is key---without it, companies can just price "Well, some customers think image recognition is creepy" into the risk model and do it anyway. Compare privacy concerns---people talk big about their concerns over privacy, but…

the only real tractable solution is for society to have a larger conversation on the ethics so the law can catch up with it

The department of commerce tried to facilitate talks about establishing a voluntary standard. The surveillance industry was so terrified of the idea that they should be held to a principled position that they wouldn't even budge on one of the weakest possible protections: A voluntary-participation standard that said people must opt-in to be identified by name through facial recognition when they are on public property.

https://www.eff.org/document/privacy-advocates-statement-nti... (and previous HN discussion on negotiations falling apart: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9729696 )

Re: A crashed advertisement reveals logs of a facial recognition system

#448

Post by jedberg »

_kb wrote: post #342
_kb wrote: post #15

You'd be surprised / scared / outraged if you knew how common this is. Any time you've been in a public place for the past few years, you've likely been watched, analysed and optimised for. Advertising in the physical world is just as scummy as it's online equivalent. Check out the video here http://sightcorp.com/ for an ultra creepy overview. You can even try their live demo: https://face-api.sightcorp.com/demo_basi…

Woah, so this got a bit of interest. To be honest I'm a little surprised this seems to be news to the HN crowd. I feel a little bad about calling out one API provider specifically, so here's a bunch more: https://www.kairos.com/ https://skybiometry.com/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-service... http://www.affectiva.com/ http://www.crowdemotion.co.uk/ http://emovu.com/e/ https://www.faceplusplus.…

Amazon too:

https://aws.amazon.com/rekognition/

Sentiment analysis for everyone!

Re: A crashed advertisement reveals logs of a facial recognition system

#449

Post by 794CD01 »

lawless123 wrote: post #443
794CD01 wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most humans today are prejudiced against nonorganic life due to not growing up interacting with anyone but other meatbags. There's a huge double standard in place that makes it somehow wrong for computers to do what humans have been doing without objection for decades or millenia.

It's because people view the AI as an infallible machine that records everything, which is much more intimidating than the gut instincts of a salesperson.

Right, that's the manifestation of their prejudice. In reality, there is a spectrum, not a dichotomy, and some humans can have better memories than some computers.
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