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"The only good use I can come up with is spotting terrorist" I can come up with a handful of benevolent uses for facial recognition in no time flat. 1.) Autom

by jjcm 9y ago

"The only good use I can come up with is spotting terrorist" I can come up with a handful of benevolent uses for facial recognition in no time flat. 1.) Automated ID systems for supermarkets. Walk into a store, store knows who you are. No checkout needed. Just walk out. 2.) Security for venues/work/etc. No more backstage passes getting copied - computer vision knows who's allowed where. 3.) Emergency response after a disaster. Automatically notify loved ones if you've been detected alive in a news feed. 4.) Voting systems. Got a stadium full of people? Just have them raise their hands - computer vision does a tally along with ID'ing who voted for what. 5.) Guest lists / ticketing. Show up to a venue, walk in. No ticket needed. Venue knows who's if you're allowed in. No more lost tickets. 6.) FaceID for the iphoneX. I'm personally loving it on mine. Like many new technologies, it can be used for both good and bad. Harnessing nuclear reactions can be used to generate massive amounts of electricity, or to level cities. What's important is that it's regulated, not that it's banned.

chrisan 9y ago
> 6.) FaceID for the iphoneX. I'm personally loving it on mine. Sorry kinda OT from malovent/benevolent route, but is FaceID fast? Or rather, is it just as fast as the normal way of unlocking with finger? Do you have to tilt your phone to your face or is there some kinda wide angle lens? I frequently unlock my phone laying flat on my desk
vlehto 9y ago
I can only see number 3.) to be actually beneficial to some people. Most of those could easily go horribly wrong. Like nobody let's police to backstage while there is crime going on. Or supermarket doing post purchase price adjustments and when you look at the receipt, they analyze your micro-expression and optimize their scamming to maximize their earnings while not pissing you off too much. All of the rest could have been done decade ago if people would simply accept RFID implant. And most people are very skeptical of that, because in almost all of your examples the tech could be used for evil too. Would you accept free RFID implant? If the only price was that the RFID fingerprint would be completely public.
amelius 9y ago
Since the parent mentioned weapons, I would add: 7) FaceID for guns. Imho, it should be mandatory, and it could be a solution in the gun control discussion.
- vlehto 9y ago
  Gun making companies would love that. As resale would be practically impossible. No cheap guns to satiate your love of variation. Markets for new guns would increase. Police would probably hate it, because having your side arm malfunction in dark alley in life and death situation is probably something you want to avoid. Organized crime would probably love it. Manufacture of unmarked firearms is not that tricky. Fresh market for illegal goods is suddenly created, as now it's not only the criminals who want these, but also survivalists and all kinds of paranoid people. If you run the numbers of murders with illegal guns/ amount of illegal guns vs. murders with legal guns / amount legal guns, you will find that illegal firearms are roughly 10X or 20X more likely to be used in homicide.
  - amelius 9y ago
    Police could be exempted from using the technique (just like they have special gun-carrying status in e.g. EU countries). Regarding the other points (companies and organized crime loving this), you can also look at other countries where guns are illegal. Practice shows there are less fatal incidents there.
    - vlehto 9y ago
      I'm from a country with very strict gun laws. That's why I know the data on illegal guns, there is apparently no such thing as "illegal gun" in U.S.A. The only thing that facial recognition would help in my country would be those cases when licensed gun collector gets robbed and his guns taken by organized criminals. In that situation it would only slow down the illegal use of those guns. Therefore it would possibly ramp the price up to a point where manufacture of illegal guns becomes profitable.
      - 9y ago
Fiahil 9y ago
1.) Automated ID systems for supermarkets. Walk into a store, store knows who you are. No checkout needed. Just walk out. Of course, nobody will ever use this feature as a mean of enhancing their "targeted marketing" nor creating a "targeted pricing" strategy. For me, this is a big NO-NO and should go straight to the malevolent usage list.
- krapp 9y ago
  Wow... so not only could it correlate someone's identity with their race and possibly religion, and anything else that could be gleaned from existing social media and added to a proprietary "loss prevention" database, it would also be able to debit arbitrarily from someone's account without any intervention. And from the point of view of the customer, it would be the most convenient thing ever. That seems to blatantly exploitative on so many levels, with so much potential for abuse, that I have to assume someone will implement it within a decade. Probably Amazon.
  - bsenftner 9y ago
    You're late. Amazon is testing this with grocery stores now.
- emiliobumachar 9y ago
  If enough people won't tolerate price discrimination, there's money to be made if a store will pledge not to do it. But if there's only one walk-out supermarket available, and it does price discriminate, and it's not too outrageous, I'm in. Waiting in line for checkout is very bothersome for me, and I like my job very much, so I'll pay more than my hourly rate at work to get out of each hour of line. (extra bothersome if there's untargeted marketing blaring through some speakers while I wait, 1984-style. But I already avoid those supermarkets) Nobody likes price discrimination, but there are advantages. Poor people pay much, much less. It's ironic that we're always coming up with inefficient measures full of collateral damage to ease thing up on the poor, but we'll rail against price discrimination like it's Salem.
  - 9y ago
zerebubuth 9y ago
> Like many new technologies, it can be used for both good and bad. Harnessing nuclear reactions can be used to generate massive amounts of electricity, or to level cities. What's important is that it's regulated, not that it's banned. I worry that, as we already see with NSA, GHCQ and friends, governments won't be quick to regulate a huge source of information that they can tap, and a source of technology that they can use for themselves. Recent history would seem to indicate that governments see the potential for state use of these techniques, but overlook the much wider scope for criminal uses of them. (E.g: Reliable facial recognition and pervasive tracking seems like it would make undercover police work much harder.) Having a stockpile of nuclear weapons feels like an innately dangerous thing, whereas having a computer system tracking everyone for auguries of pre-crime is light-hearted enough that it's the central plot premise of a major TV show. Many politicians are who are rightly wary of the destructive power of nuclear technology may not see the same dangers in computer vision or pervasive surveillance.
bsenftner 9y ago
Number 3 has a much more critical use: after any disaster, the medical ops supplies have to be guarded, because people in panic will simply raid the medical supplies. Easily deployed mobile FR is critical for any disaster operation, as it frees up people that would ordinarily waste time guarding areas from the panic.

by jjcm 9y ago

chrisan 9y ago

> 6.) FaceID for the iphoneX. I'm personally loving it on mine. Sorry kinda OT from malovent/benevolent route, but is FaceID fast? Or rather, is it just as fast as the normal way of unlocking with finger? Do you have to tilt your phone to your face or is there some kinda wide angle lens? I frequently unlock my phone laying flat on my desk

vlehto 9y ago

I can only see number 3.) to be actually beneficial to some people. Most of those could easily go horribly wrong. Like nobody let's police to backstage while there is crime going on. Or supermarket doing post purchase price adjustments and when you look at the receipt, they analyze your micro-expression and optimize their scamming to maximize their earnings while not pissing you off too much. All of the rest could have been done decade ago if people would simply accept RFID implant. And most people are very skeptical of that, because in almost all of your examples the tech could be used for evil too. Would you accept free RFID implant? If the only price was that the RFID fingerprint would be completely public.

amelius 9y ago

Since the parent mentioned weapons, I would add: 7) FaceID for guns. Imho, it should be mandatory, and it could be a solution in the gun control discussion.

vlehto 9y ago
Gun making companies would love that. As resale would be practically impossible. No cheap guns to satiate your love of variation. Markets for new guns would increase. Police would probably hate it, because having your side arm malfunction in dark alley in life and death situation is probably something you want to avoid. Organized crime would probably love it. Manufacture of unmarked firearms is not that tricky. Fresh market for illegal goods is suddenly created, as now it's not only the criminals who want these, but also survivalists and all kinds of paranoid people. If you run the numbers of murders with illegal guns/ amount of illegal guns vs. murders with legal guns / amount legal guns, you will find that illegal firearms are roughly 10X or 20X more likely to be used in homicide.
- amelius 9y ago
  Police could be exempted from using the technique (just like they have special gun-carrying status in e.g. EU countries). Regarding the other points (companies and organized crime loving this), you can also look at other countries where guns are illegal. Practice shows there are less fatal incidents there.
  - vlehto 9y ago
    I'm from a country with very strict gun laws. That's why I know the data on illegal guns, there is apparently no such thing as "illegal gun" in U.S.A. The only thing that facial recognition would help in my country would be those cases when licensed gun collector gets robbed and his guns taken by organized criminals. In that situation it would only slow down the illegal use of those guns. Therefore it would possibly ramp the price up to a point where manufacture of illegal guns becomes profitable.
    - 9y ago

Fiahil 9y ago

1.) Automated ID systems for supermarkets. Walk into a store, store knows who you are. No checkout needed. Just walk out. Of course, nobody will ever use this feature as a mean of enhancing their "targeted marketing" nor creating a "targeted pricing" strategy. For me, this is a big NO-NO and should go straight to the malevolent usage list.

krapp 9y ago
Wow... so not only could it correlate someone's identity with their race and possibly religion, and anything else that could be gleaned from existing social media and added to a proprietary "loss prevention" database, it would also be able to debit arbitrarily from someone's account without any intervention. And from the point of view of the customer, it would be the most convenient thing ever. That seems to blatantly exploitative on so many levels, with so much potential for abuse, that I have to assume someone will implement it within a decade. Probably Amazon.
- bsenftner 9y ago
  You're late. Amazon is testing this with grocery stores now.
emiliobumachar 9y ago
If enough people won't tolerate price discrimination, there's money to be made if a store will pledge not to do it. But if there's only one walk-out supermarket available, and it does price discriminate, and it's not too outrageous, I'm in. Waiting in line for checkout is very bothersome for me, and I like my job very much, so I'll pay more than my hourly rate at work to get out of each hour of line. (extra bothersome if there's untargeted marketing blaring through some speakers while I wait, 1984-style. But I already avoid those supermarkets) Nobody likes price discrimination, but there are advantages. Poor people pay much, much less. It's ironic that we're always coming up with inefficient measures full of collateral damage to ease thing up on the poor, but we'll rail against price discrimination like it's Salem.
- 9y ago

zerebubuth 9y ago

> Like many new technologies, it can be used for both good and bad. Harnessing nuclear reactions can be used to generate massive amounts of electricity, or to level cities. What's important is that it's regulated, not that it's banned. I worry that, as we already see with NSA, GHCQ and friends, governments won't be quick to regulate a huge source of information that they can tap, and a source of technology that they can use for themselves. Recent history would seem to indicate that governments see the potential for state use of these techniques, but overlook the much wider scope for criminal uses of them. (E.g: Reliable facial recognition and pervasive tracking seems like it would make undercover police work much harder.) Having a stockpile of nuclear weapons feels like an innately dangerous thing, whereas having a computer system tracking everyone for auguries of pre-crime is light-hearted enough that it's the central plot premise of a major TV show. Many politicians are who are rightly wary of the destructive power of nuclear technology may not see the same dangers in computer vision or pervasive surveillance.

bsenftner 9y ago

Number 3 has a much more critical use: after any disaster, the medical ops supplies have to be guarded, because people in panic will simply raid the medical supplies. Easily deployed mobile FR is critical for any disaster operation, as it frees up people that would ordinarily waste time guarding areas from the panic.