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Facebook: we're moving away from this ethically and morally reprehensible technology under their breath because the IP is better held in a different part of ou

Facebook: we're moving away from this ethically and morally reprehensible technology under their breath because the IP is better held in a different part of our corporate structure.

tqi 5y ago
Facial recognition is ethically and morally reprehensible technology?
- peakaboo 5y ago
  No it's great to track and record every human around the clock and completely automated. That way, we make sure everyone stays in line and don't try to organize themselves to get rid of dictatorship.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    No no, it's for their safety. We can now watch as you get mugged at gunpoint while not doing anything about it. See, you're safer now that we've facially recognized and identified you getting mugged.
- falcolas 5y ago
  The technology itself? No. The way it's used in the real world? By a wide margin of use, yes.
  - RNCTX 5y ago
    The answer is therefore "yes." In a sane world, there would be sane laws with stiff penalties (as in, jail). For instance, "any identifying data about individual users may only be used for authentication and shall be completely under the control of the user. 'Under control' means the user is allowed to delete it. Examples of activity not compatible with 'under control of the user' include training AI models. Illegal use of authentication data will represent a felony punishable by XYZ." And even then, if there is jail, it's not beyond a corporation to appoint a lesser VP to serve the jail time and just "take care of" him when he gets out. The American agricultural products company you would think it is + their American bank + some British banks did so years ago when they got caught trying to offset the cost of R&D farmland in Africa by leasing it out to those warlord / death squad types (and their arms dealers) who hand machetes, cocaine, and AK47s to 10 year olds.
- daenz 5y ago
  It probably is an unethical technology. Its primary feature is to strongly tie someone's identity to their physical body. This alone is not inherently unethical, but it opens the door for so many abuses that it is hard to consider it as ethical. These abuses come from the ability to use a centrally-controlled technology to systematically isolate and excommunicate people from society, no matter where they go. It becomes even more unethical when you consider the secondary, less publicly acknowledged feature: to provide plausible deniability for pursuing false positives. When facial recognition has the legal weight to drive searches and arrests, the "fuzziness" of false positives becomes an asset to those performing searches and arrests.
  - xeromal 5y ago
    You could use that argument against DNA matching too. Sure, it helps with crime but it also allows someone to be tied to their physical body.
    - gambiting 5y ago
      What makes facial recognition so dangerous is that it's so trivial and so cheap to deploy. You literally walk into a supermarket and tills have facial recognition built in to automatically bind your shopping to "you" even if you don't have an account or pay with cash. It's abused to hell basically and you will be facially recognized pretty much everywhere you go in public. It's definitely an "unethical" technology because of how it's generally used. DNA testing isn't, because the technology is far too expensive and time consuming to be used this way. The second supermarkets start scanning my DNA to give me special offers, I'll complain about it too. My point is, this sort of "well it could be used this way!" argument isn't helpful at all. Retina/fingerprint scanning could be used this way too, but it isn't - that doesn't make the argument against facial recognition invalid, or it any less unethical.
    - datameta 5y ago
      You can't scan someone's DNA from 20 feet away in tens of milliseconds with <$100 of hardware. We're able to do facial recognition on microcontrollers costing less than $5. Commercial facial classification on that class of hardware is half a decade out.
- astrea 5y ago
  To me, philosophically, A tool by itself isn't inherently good or bad, but the way in which it is applied is. Unfortunately, people couldn't resist the temptation to do evil that large-scale, (relatively) rapid, programmatic identification (faulty or otherwise) of humans enables.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

Facebook: we're moving away from this ethically and morally reprehensible technology under their breath because the IP is better held in a different part of our corporate structure.

tqi 5y ago

Facial recognition is ethically and morally reprehensible technology?

peakaboo 5y ago
No it's great to track and record every human around the clock and completely automated. That way, we make sure everyone stays in line and don't try to organize themselves to get rid of dictatorship.
- dylan604 5y ago
  No no, it's for their safety. We can now watch as you get mugged at gunpoint while not doing anything about it. See, you're safer now that we've facially recognized and identified you getting mugged.
falcolas 5y ago
The technology itself? No. The way it's used in the real world? By a wide margin of use, yes.
- RNCTX 5y ago
  The answer is therefore "yes." In a sane world, there would be sane laws with stiff penalties (as in, jail). For instance, "any identifying data about individual users may only be used for authentication and shall be completely under the control of the user. 'Under control' means the user is allowed to delete it. Examples of activity not compatible with 'under control of the user' include training AI models. Illegal use of authentication data will represent a felony punishable by XYZ." And even then, if there is jail, it's not beyond a corporation to appoint a lesser VP to serve the jail time and just "take care of" him when he gets out. The American agricultural products company you would think it is + their American bank + some British banks did so years ago when they got caught trying to offset the cost of R&D farmland in Africa by leasing it out to those warlord / death squad types (and their arms dealers) who hand machetes, cocaine, and AK47s to 10 year olds.
daenz 5y ago
It probably is an unethical technology. Its primary feature is to strongly tie someone's identity to their physical body. This alone is not inherently unethical, but it opens the door for so many abuses that it is hard to consider it as ethical. These abuses come from the ability to use a centrally-controlled technology to systematically isolate and excommunicate people from society, no matter where they go. It becomes even more unethical when you consider the secondary, less publicly acknowledged feature: to provide plausible deniability for pursuing false positives. When facial recognition has the legal weight to drive searches and arrests, the "fuzziness" of false positives becomes an asset to those performing searches and arrests.
- xeromal 5y ago
  You could use that argument against DNA matching too. Sure, it helps with crime but it also allows someone to be tied to their physical body.
  - gambiting 5y ago
    What makes facial recognition so dangerous is that it's so trivial and so cheap to deploy. You literally walk into a supermarket and tills have facial recognition built in to automatically bind your shopping to "you" even if you don't have an account or pay with cash. It's abused to hell basically and you will be facially recognized pretty much everywhere you go in public. It's definitely an "unethical" technology because of how it's generally used. DNA testing isn't, because the technology is far too expensive and time consuming to be used this way. The second supermarkets start scanning my DNA to give me special offers, I'll complain about it too. My point is, this sort of "well it could be used this way!" argument isn't helpful at all. Retina/fingerprint scanning could be used this way too, but it isn't - that doesn't make the argument against facial recognition invalid, or it any less unethical.
  - datameta 5y ago
    You can't scan someone's DNA from 20 feet away in tens of milliseconds with <$100 of hardware. We're able to do facial recognition on microcontrollers costing less than $5. Commercial facial classification on that class of hardware is half a decade out.
astrea 5y ago
To me, philosophically, A tool by itself isn't inherently good or bad, but the way in which it is applied is. Unfortunately, people couldn't resist the temptation to do evil that large-scale, (relatively) rapid, programmatic identification (faulty or otherwise) of humans enables.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]