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Just recently IBM announced with a loud PR move that the company is getting out of the face recognition business. Guess what? Wall Street doesn't want to keep s

by osipov 6y ago

Just recently IBM announced with a loud PR move that the company is getting out of the face recognition business. Guess what? Wall Street doesn't want to keep subsidizing IBM's subpar face recognition technology when open source and Google solutions are pushing the state of the art.

ahelwer 6y ago
Not something to brag about. Facial recognition has very few applications outside of total surveillance. We should not respect those who lend it their time and effort.
- monocasa 6y ago
  I thought the real focus on the bad actors at this point was on gait detection. Works in civil unrest situations where everyone covers their face. Not the the difference matters that much.
  - anewdirection 6y ago
    Its not exclusive. Bad actors are working on whatever they are paid to build, by other bad actors with less technical acumen and more money. Edit: I should add, that most of the actual progress is being made by smart people who think its an interesting problem and are unaware or uncaring of the clear outcome of such tech.
    - monocasa 6y ago
      In this case I meant bad actors as in who is funding the research with the idea of increasing surveillance for the purpose of squashing dissent.
- jcims 6y ago
  >Facial recognition has very few applications outside of total surveillance. That's not really for you to decide, is it? You're absolutely free to have that opinion of course. >We should not respect those who lend it their time and effort. Also your choice of course. Facial recognition is essentially a light integration of powerful underlying technologies. Should 'we' ostracize those working on machine learning, computer vision, network and distributed computing, etc?
  - hopfscotch2 6y ago
    If they want to use it to enable surveillance, yes.
  - TehCorwiz 6y ago
    You didn't really address the author's point which was that there don't appear to be compelling uses of facial technology beyond mass automated surveillance. I can't think of other uses and I'd be interested if you can come up with some.
    - nitrogen 6y ago
      Biometric authentication is one that comes to mind. Facial recognition running locally on my own photo library would also be useful for organizing photos. A cloud-free local-only home automation system that can tell the difference between owners/housemates/guests and customize behavior accordingly would also be nice.
      - sk0g 6y ago
        I'm looking into YOLO for this, but it's moreso to verify your selfie == image on document, and we want to avoid sending highly sensitive information to third party providers. The current service we use, while accurate, costs 50 cents per verification... Edit: reading through this thread, if the model isn't super massive, we could offer on-browser verification! 27MB is still a hefty download though.
    - sterlind 6y ago
      Labeling photos with who's in them, either on social media or in private image albums (creating indexes of people in your photos.) Arguably this is a front for mass surveillance, or can easily be misused for that, but the ostensible purpose is separate and benign.
    - canada_dry 6y ago
      Here's one: identifying child soldiers. [i] https://www.pyimagesearch.com/2020/05/11/an-ethical-application-of-computer-vision-and-deep-learning-identifying-child-soldiers-through-automatic-age-and-military-fatigue-detection/ https://www.pyimagesearch.com/2020/05/11/an-ethical-applicat...
- ericd 6y ago
  Being able to distinguish between people is pretty foundational to being able to personalize AI applications. If you wanted to make a smart home actually smart and not just full of inconvenient remote controlled appliances, this is pretty necessary. There are obviously privacy concerns with this example, it’d ideally be fully on-prem.

by osipov 6y ago

ahelwer 6y ago

Not something to brag about. Facial recognition has very few applications outside of total surveillance. We should not respect those who lend it their time and effort.

monocasa 6y ago
I thought the real focus on the bad actors at this point was on gait detection. Works in civil unrest situations where everyone covers their face. Not the the difference matters that much.
- anewdirection 6y ago
  Its not exclusive. Bad actors are working on whatever they are paid to build, by other bad actors with less technical acumen and more money. Edit: I should add, that most of the actual progress is being made by smart people who think its an interesting problem and are unaware or uncaring of the clear outcome of such tech.
  - monocasa 6y ago
    In this case I meant bad actors as in who is funding the research with the idea of increasing surveillance for the purpose of squashing dissent.
jcims 6y ago
>Facial recognition has very few applications outside of total surveillance. That's not really for you to decide, is it? You're absolutely free to have that opinion of course. >We should not respect those who lend it their time and effort. Also your choice of course. Facial recognition is essentially a light integration of powerful underlying technologies. Should 'we' ostracize those working on machine learning, computer vision, network and distributed computing, etc?
- hopfscotch2 6y ago
  If they want to use it to enable surveillance, yes.
- TehCorwiz 6y ago
  You didn't really address the author's point which was that there don't appear to be compelling uses of facial technology beyond mass automated surveillance. I can't think of other uses and I'd be interested if you can come up with some.
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    Biometric authentication is one that comes to mind. Facial recognition running locally on my own photo library would also be useful for organizing photos. A cloud-free local-only home automation system that can tell the difference between owners/housemates/guests and customize behavior accordingly would also be nice.
    - sk0g 6y ago
      I'm looking into YOLO for this, but it's moreso to verify your selfie == image on document, and we want to avoid sending highly sensitive information to third party providers. The current service we use, while accurate, costs 50 cents per verification... Edit: reading through this thread, if the model isn't super massive, we could offer on-browser verification! 27MB is still a hefty download though.
  - sterlind 6y ago
    Labeling photos with who's in them, either on social media or in private image albums (creating indexes of people in your photos.) Arguably this is a front for mass surveillance, or can easily be misused for that, but the ostensible purpose is separate and benign.
  - canada_dry 6y ago
    Here's one: identifying child soldiers. [i] https://www.pyimagesearch.com/2020/05/11/an-ethical-application-of-computer-vision-and-deep-learning-identifying-child-soldiers-through-automatic-age-and-military-fatigue-detection/ https://www.pyimagesearch.com/2020/05/11/an-ethical-applicat...
ericd 6y ago
Being able to distinguish between people is pretty foundational to being able to personalize AI applications. If you wanted to make a smart home actually smart and not just full of inconvenient remote controlled appliances, this is pretty necessary. There are obviously privacy concerns with this example, it’d ideally be fully on-prem.