3 ms·

A bit of a strong idea, but what if we just outright say that face recognition is unethical? I have a hard time finding any use that is positive for society. A

by rtpg 9y ago

A bit of a strong idea, but what if we just outright say that face recognition is unethical? I have a hard time finding any use that is positive for society. Advertising and surveillance. Given that, what if we try to convince as many people as possible to not research this tech, nor work for any company working on this. You wouldn't work for a weapons manufacturer, maybe the same metrics need to be applied to adtech and all this other tracking stuff

tmnvix 9y ago
Well, you (and I) wouldn't work for a weapons manufacturer, but many people would - and do.
- SauciestGNU 9y ago
  Well yes, but why should we not ostracize those people like we presumably would do to others who committed, participated in, or collaborated with atrocities?
chr1 9y ago
You can't make people forget technologies you don't like selectively. The more we advance in adjacent technologies (like in autonomous driving) the easier it will become to advance in face recognition, to the point where just a tiny group of people can develop it. Fighting technology with artificial bans have never worked, and privacy or ethics based arguments won't work now either. The only hope is better technology of controlling the government: better ways to vote, better ways to monitor financial dealings of politicians. If, people lose their privacy, but government loses it's privacy too, ordinary people will be the ones who benefit the most.
- dalbasal 9y ago
  Well... the ban on using nuclear weapons has worked so far. The ban (to the extent it exists) on using unwarranted digital data dragnets in civilian policing has at least limited its use some. Not that I disagree with the larger points, it's an uphill fight.
- rtpg 9y ago
  It's not about artificial bans. It's about having a social compact so that only the most incompetent/"unethical" end up working in it. Even when the tech is known, if you aren't good at software development then the projects will have difficulty.
dalbasal 9y ago
Would that be useful? First, arms industries and even mercenaries don't seem to have much difficulty operating. So, whatever boycotts individuals might practice don't really do much. Even tobacco companies find employees, and no one likes them. Second, we (in practice, eg eu cookie laws) rarely define these effectively. Is face recognition the problem? Let's ID people based on some other markers. You'd probably need very broad, principled, constituion-esque language. It is illegal to de-anonymise, store data or somesuch. My guess is that this will be almost impossible politically with bootleggers and Baptist's left right and centre. There are just very few examples of what we would need, in modern legislation.
- rtpg 9y ago
  Legislation can help somewhat, but I think that having a stronger ethical stance can help a lot. Think back when Y combinator funded that "installer bundled with ads" startup. They got yelled at for it by a lot of people. It slowly changes things
  - dalbasal 9y ago
    I guess we have different levels of confidence in consumer action-like initiatives. One sleazy startup is a rounding error to yc. Online snooping is worth at least 100 bn to Google and FB, most of the revenue of two giant and otherwise desirable startups. Also, it's important to all the businesses that buy these ads, the creators that publish on YouTube (for example, but they honestly get very little from this), etc. I don't think we can away that with appeals.

by rtpg 9y ago

tmnvix 9y ago

Well, you (and I) wouldn't work for a weapons manufacturer, but many people would - and do.

SauciestGNU 9y ago
Well yes, but why should we not ostracize those people like we presumably would do to others who committed, participated in, or collaborated with atrocities?

chr1 9y ago

You can't make people forget technologies you don't like selectively. The more we advance in adjacent technologies (like in autonomous driving) the easier it will become to advance in face recognition, to the point where just a tiny group of people can develop it. Fighting technology with artificial bans have never worked, and privacy or ethics based arguments won't work now either. The only hope is better technology of controlling the government: better ways to vote, better ways to monitor financial dealings of politicians. If, people lose their privacy, but government loses it's privacy too, ordinary people will be the ones who benefit the most.

dalbasal 9y ago
Well... the ban on using nuclear weapons has worked so far. The ban (to the extent it exists) on using unwarranted digital data dragnets in civilian policing has at least limited its use some. Not that I disagree with the larger points, it's an uphill fight.
rtpg 9y ago
It's not about artificial bans. It's about having a social compact so that only the most incompetent/"unethical" end up working in it. Even when the tech is known, if you aren't good at software development then the projects will have difficulty.

dalbasal 9y ago

Would that be useful? First, arms industries and even mercenaries don't seem to have much difficulty operating. So, whatever boycotts individuals might practice don't really do much. Even tobacco companies find employees, and no one likes them. Second, we (in practice, eg eu cookie laws) rarely define these effectively. Is face recognition the problem? Let's ID people based on some other markers. You'd probably need very broad, principled, constituion-esque language. It is illegal to de-anonymise, store data or somesuch. My guess is that this will be almost impossible politically with bootleggers and Baptist's left right and centre. There are just very few examples of what we would need, in modern legislation.

rtpg 9y ago
Legislation can help somewhat, but I think that having a stronger ethical stance can help a lot. Think back when Y combinator funded that "installer bundled with ads" startup. They got yelled at for it by a lot of people. It slowly changes things
- dalbasal 9y ago
  I guess we have different levels of confidence in consumer action-like initiatives. One sleazy startup is a rounding error to yc. Online snooping is worth at least 100 bn to Google and FB, most of the revenue of two giant and otherwise desirable startups. Also, it's important to all the businesses that buy these ads, the creators that publish on YouTube (for example, but they honestly get very little from this), etc. I don't think we can away that with appeals.