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Rite Aid banned from using face recognition software after false ID shoplifters
- macintux 3y agoDup: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38704830 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38704830
- btbuildem 3y agoThat's a different article from a different source
- passwordoops 3y agoI missed that previous post, and frankly this is important enough to justify being one the front page again. Especially with the amount of irrational love heaped on AI snake oil salespeople here
- T3RMINATED 3y ago[dead]
- btbuildem 3y ago> with “largely lower-income, non-white neighborhoods” serving as the technology testbed. There's been plenty of articles pointing out that certain demographics are very under-represented in training sets, leading to all kinds of errors [1] [2]. Technological advances aside, the company should have clearly disclosed their use of facial recognition technology - concealing that raises serious privacy issues. 1: https://www.npr.org/2021/09/04/1034368231/facebook-apologizes-ai-labels-black-men-primates-racial-bias https://www.npr.org/2021/09/04/1034368231/facebook-apologize... 2: https://news.mit.edu/2018/study-finds-gender-skin-type-bias-artificial-intelligence-systems-0212 https://news.mit.edu/2018/study-finds-gender-skin-type-bias-...
- jrochkind1 3y agoIs there any law requiring disclosure of facial recognition? Should there be? I don't know if there is, but don't think so? I think there probably should be -- but also, it'll be just another fine-print fades-into-landscape thing. All the signs about video monitoring don't really matter much, we just assume there's video monitoring everywhere and don't even notice the signs anymore. I assume facial recognition will soon be the same, unless it is regulated beyond requiring disclosure.
- brookst 3y agoYeah any warning system will just turn into California’s prop ~~86~~ 65, which led every building in the state to add signage reading “this building may or may not contain cancer-causing chemicals.” Which is completely useless.
- bolasanibk 3y agoDid you mean prop 65? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_California_Proposition_65 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_California_Proposition_...
- brookst 3y agoYes, thank you. Corrected!
- Thorrez 3y agoOne difference is that it's hard to know if you have the chemicals in your building, or be able to eliminate them. Knowing that you have facial recognition and eliminating it is much easier.
- brookst 3y agoNot for any landlord that doesn’t control every business and person in the building. All it takes is UPS adding facial recognition to driver bodycams or something and suddenly your building has facial recognition in it. Better to just put the warning everywhere and forget about it.
- georgedegennaro 3y ago[flagged]
- helsinkiandrew 3y agoIf the best face recognition software has an error rate of 0.08% [1] and Rite Aid serves 1.6M customers a day [2] what moron thought that was a good idea? [1] https://github.com/usnistgov/frvt/blob/nist-pages/reports/1N/frvt_1N_report_2020_03_27.pdf https://github.com/usnistgov/frvt/blob/nist-pages/reports/1N... [2] https://careers.riteaid.com/pages/company-info https://careers.riteaid.com/pages/company-info
- crazygringo 3y agoI'm not defending Rite-Aid at all, but that's not the problem here. It's pretty easy for the system to show the source photo to an employee, and then they themselves can judge if they feel confident the shopper is actually the same person. Facial recognition software should always be implemented under the assumption that it makes plenty of false positives, and human review is always necessary. (What you're talking about is 1,280 false positives a day, or less than 1 per store per day.) Again -- not defending Rite-Aid here. Just saying that there's nothing wrong with the statistics of it.
- brookst 3y agoWouldn’t it depend on how many accurate positives there were? If it’s one false positive against nine real positives, great. If it’s one false positive a day for a month before a real match occurs, nobody will pay any attention at all.
- crazygringo 3y agoDrugstores like Rite-Aid often encounter multiple shoplifters a day. Assuming most of them are repeat, then there are going to be more true positives than false positives. (Again, not defending Rite-Aid here, just pointing out that the statistics aren't the issue.)
- helsinkiandrew 3y ago> .. then they themselves can judge if they feel confident the shopper is actually the same person Yes - but the "approach and identify" of false positives/innocent people was the actual embarrassment and harassment that the system got banned for, it was the human review (asking for ID etc) that was the issue.
- itslennysfault 3y agoI wonder who provides them this tech. A friend of mine quit a company because they were developing a VERY similar technology a few years back. He "lovingly" called it RPaaS (Racial Profiling as a Service). He went WAAAY above his pay grade to protest against the creation of the product and it ultimately ended in him sending a letter of resignation.
- JohnFen 3y agoPlease express my admiration for your friend's actions here. We need more people like him.
- jdksmdbtbdnmsm 3y agoMore people who make fascile pleas inevitably resilting in hopeless failure? I think it would be better to actually change things. This and other everyday examples show that this means overcoming capitalism.
- JohnFen 3y agoWe need more people who are unwilling to do work that they think is harmful in exchange for a paycheck.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- phailhaus 3y agoOvercoming capitalism or overcoming the concept of value? They did this because they felt that the value they could recoup from shoplifters/deterrence was more than the cost of building and maintaining this system. None of that requires capitalism.
- Anthony-G 3y agoI think you’re being unfairly harsh. It’s good for workers to refuse to carry out orders that are unethical. Ideally, such actions would be carried out collectively by a union branch or some other worker organisation. But if that’s not feasible, the next best thing is for individuals to push back on unethical initiatives. Also, not everyone agrees that the best way to counter the ills of capitalism is to replace the whole system with something else that may be better but could be worse (in different ways). Being so casually dismissive of such people’s effort to improve things within capitalism means they won’t ever be interested in ideas that go beyond reformism.
- antipaul 3y agoCan we get checkout video recording out of other grocery stores too?
- aendruk 3y agoI just want a hard expiration on it, something like a 48-hour horizon for the video and any data derived from it.
- alwaysrunning 3y agoDoes this ban them from using all facial recognition software or just the software they used, which are two very different things. Also, I think ppl would be surprised at the number of places that use this type of sw (maybe not ppl here.) Walmart has amazing sw that id's ppl before they even enter the store and regularly work with LE in helping find ppl.
- _c2xg 3y agohttps://youtube.com/watch?v=Zn7oWIhFffs https://youtube.com/watch?v=Zn7oWIhFffs