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Click bait journalism. Pointless article. Bad journalism tricking you for ad dollars with nonsense. I am a lead software scientist in the Facial Recognition in

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.

Pfhreak 8y ago
You have a lot of experience in the industry, and are able to make your own evaluations of a product based on (I'm guessing) years and years of daily interaction with that domain. Do you think police departmant purchasers are as well informed as you are?Able to make the same thorough analysis? What happens when a facial recognition product that you believe performs poorly is used and everyone thinks it performs well? (Hey, we made all these arrests based off this product, it's really working well for us!)
- bsenftner 8y ago
  Police departments are not well informed at all; and they are the constant targets of manipulative, fact-free marketing. Thank gawd they can't just go out and purchase any security / surveillance technology they fancy. Typically a trial / vetting period is used to test a given system for accuracy as well as ability to integrate with existing systems, plus the over all expense of operating the system over time. This is when Rekognition falls down, because the accuracy is too wide, the system requires human operators to make up for the lack of accuracy. Then the monthly is expensive to use it is high. Plus there is a perceptual disconnect officers have with the FR system operators required to maintain Rekognition: these operators more or less become FR specialists, with salaries to match, but their actual moment to moment work is closer to a security guard, with their technological knowledge only needed for moments at a time. Police department Directors have a hard time justifying these new roles, in light of the multiple new high expenses required to use Rekognition.
- bsenftner 8y ago
  Also, if the FR system performs poorly, it will be offering false positives (the wrong person) and false negatives (it missed the guy) and that just causes the organization using it to disregard it, then abandon using it, and discontinue the contract. It's an expensive waste of time.

Pfhreak 8y ago

You have a lot of experience in the industry, and are able to make your own evaluations of a product based on (I'm guessing) years and years of daily interaction with that domain. Do you think police departmant purchasers are as well informed as you are?Able to make the same thorough analysis? What happens when a facial recognition product that you believe performs poorly is used and everyone thinks it performs well? (Hey, we made all these arrests based off this product, it's really working well for us!)

bsenftner 8y ago
Police departments are not well informed at all; and they are the constant targets of manipulative, fact-free marketing. Thank gawd they can't just go out and purchase any security / surveillance technology they fancy. Typically a trial / vetting period is used to test a given system for accuracy as well as ability to integrate with existing systems, plus the over all expense of operating the system over time. This is when Rekognition falls down, because the accuracy is too wide, the system requires human operators to make up for the lack of accuracy. Then the monthly is expensive to use it is high. Plus there is a perceptual disconnect officers have with the FR system operators required to maintain Rekognition: these operators more or less become FR specialists, with salaries to match, but their actual moment to moment work is closer to a security guard, with their technological knowledge only needed for moments at a time. Police department Directors have a hard time justifying these new roles, in light of the multiple new high expenses required to use Rekognition.
bsenftner 8y ago
Also, if the FR system performs poorly, it will be offering false positives (the wrong person) and false negatives (it missed the guy) and that just causes the organization using it to disregard it, then abandon using it, and discontinue the contract. It's an expensive waste of time.