AI and Facial Recognition
Facial Recognition: What is too far?
 |
| (image source) |
Artificial intelligence covers a wide variety of topics. One major issue that is coming up across the world is facial recognition. The Quartz newspaper described the European Union's (EU) recent meeting in which they discussed their agenda to regulate the technology sector of the EU's nations (article). The document titled "White Paper on Artificial Intelligence" barely mentioned Facial Recognition which would allow the countries to have unregulated permissions to set up facial recognition technology however they want. They literally can put up security cameras in an Orwellian fashion throughout the streets.
The Washington Post published an article furthering this debate by explaining why various tech companies want to have regulations on facial recognition software. US and China are the prominent countries making facial recognition software. Major companies around the world have said that they want regulations on facial recognition; yet, they don't really back most of the legislation that is drafted (almost none of which, if not none, has passed). Facial recognition simply is such a strong tool that people have not quite understood how to use without infringing on privacy and personal rights.
Facial recognition can be a beneficial tool; however, it definitely needs regulations and better data. It can be used to racially profile people as well as lead us into a dystopian society. As long as we have some sort of regulations, then we will not fall into the trap of privacy infringement or racially charged prejudices. Currently, according to the Washington Post and CBS news, facial recognition software that is used to detect crime is already fueled with racially charged information which forces the AI to have racially charged results. The most prominent incidence is using facial recognition to prevent crime by pointing out people similar to those who have committed crimes in the past. In most locations, the historical data of criminal cases is racially fueled which will lead the AI to producing more facially fueled data. The main question revolving around facial recognition is, how far is too far? Most major corporations are out to make money, so what regulations will companies actually approve? Will facial recognition be another step towards infringing on people's privacy and civil liberties?
 |
| Will I Am Looking at his Digital Self (source) |
Facial recognition artificial intelligence relates to our class in multiple ways. Firstly, we watched a video about how far is too far for AI. The video talked about creating avatars for people that are very similar to the person it is designed after and almost lifelike.These avatars can be used in negative ways similar to facial recognition. Moreover, when we talk about machine learning, facial recognition can use machine learning to determine criminal activity.
I think that in order to have facial recognition as a tool, society has to give up certain rights. The problem with this is that it does not let the individual decide whether or not they keep their privacy since we live in such a digitized world and if we want to use services for our devices, we have to give up those rights.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you. Facial recognition requires people to give up certain privacy rights for it to be used. But do you think that it should be used at all? Are these rights worth giving up for facial recognition to be used?
DeleteI think it is so hard to decide because people will always find a loop hole to exploit those rights we give up, like Ehren said, to use services for our devices. But in my opinion I feel like some rights are worth giving up, but that is subjective, because some of the rights that I am willing to give up, someone might not be so willing, so Its a very interesting question you brought up Kathryn and one that should be one of the question's asked while AI advances.
DeleteWhen I was in South Korea, they had a whole exhibition protesting the development of facial recognition in their country. I think they claimed that this technology would allow the government to track their every move. Since it is still a very beneficial tool for us, very strict regulations should be enforced, otherwise, like Ehren said, people would have to give up certain rights.
ReplyDeleteHmmn. I can't not compare this to the fingerprint. Just like a face, they are unique to an individual and allow for their identification. They are also everywhere - i.e. easy for others to "collect". And in terms of the nineteenth century, I would count the fingerprint id as a technical, if not technological, advancement. But no one's opposed to the fingerprint id. So why do you think society is more wary of the use of facial recognition than we were of fingerprint identification? I imagine is has something to do with the face's prominence and how easy it is to "collect"
ReplyDeleteConcerning racist regulations, I would argue that those are a result of an already "racially charged" institution. In the example you gave, racism wasn't an inherent quality of software, but more so the input fed into it?
This facial recognition software is in aims to prevent crime, AI is using racially charged data. But we don't have any data that isn't racially charged.
DeleteMoreover, for fingerprints, they don't really have a way to predict people who can come crimes. Plus, they're harder to identify as opposed to faces because facial recognition simply requires access to cameras.
People are definitely more wary because of how easy it is to collect it as well as the racially charged data to try and prevent crimes.
I agree that there should be regulation on mass facial recognition outside of our homes. However, I think we are currently already "feeding" data to companies like Facebook that is able to detect you on your photos or faceApp which is belied to be storing pictures. Many of the existing data could be used once we do go to mass facial recognition.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think facial recognition is used for within our homes? And yeah, we definitely already are feeding data to big companies, especially when we upload lots of photos to the cloud or just the internet in general.
DeleteOne of my big questions about mass facial recognition is using it to prevent people from committing crimes by trying to arrest them before they've done anything.
The thing I worry about facial recognition is homing missile. I don't want this technology being managed by a private company or Trump. Cameras with facial recognition everywhere feels dangerous somehow.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your concern. This is definitely why facial recognition is a technology that strips away people's rights. I didn't even think about using facial recognition for homing missiles!
DeleteI totally agree with your concern. No technology should be free, even Google, Facebook, etc. Who knows if those company are using facial recognition to track us down via "free" video calls?
ReplyDeleteI'm sure this is more well known, but what do you mean with facial recognition tracking us down with "free" video calls?
DeleteI think he meant maybe facebook is collecting our facial data by offering 'free' video calls. We don't really know what facebook, and literally any other companies, is doing with our video data. If they have good moral codes, I don't see a problem there. But especially for facebook, I am very certain they are using our faces to train their models so that they can recognize pretty much everyone in a given photographs. They can then infer the link between us and other people in that photo, our location (through the photo's metadata), our preferences (through object recognition maybe?), and many more things. I always believe that technology is so advanced that we don't even know its capability until we see it with our own eyes. So our best bet is to better be safe than sorry.
DeleteAnd with such data, they can do many things (at least selling user data for advertising firms).
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteFacebook has already been collecting our facial data from the beginning, not until video calls came up. Do you guys forget about the pictures that we posted on Facebook, and the tag feature?
Delete