Google says it won’t sell face recognition for now—but it will be hard to slow its use


Google says it won’t sell face recognition for now—but it will be hard to slow its use

Google will stop offering face recognition through its cloud APIs—that is, until it can come up with policies to  prevent misuses of the technology, it said in a blog post today. 

Asia specific: Significantly, the decision was announced in a blog post about the use of Google’s AI tools in Asia. Face recognition is being deployed rapidly in China by many of the country’s big AI companies. Some Chinese face-scanning tools were built using government ID data, and the authorities are using them to find criminals and track dissidents.

About face: The news also comes not long after a report from AI Now, a nonprofit, singled out face recognition as a technology that needs to be regulated because of its potential as a tool of surveillance and repression. “The role of AI in widespread surveillance has expanded immensely in the U.S., China, and many other countries worldwide,” the report warned.

“Key questions”: Kent Walker, senior VP of Global Affairs, wrote: “Like many technologies with multiple uses, facial recognition merits careful consideration to ensure its use is aligned with our principles and values, and avoids abuse and harmful outcomes. We continue to work with many organizations to identify and address these challenges.”

Face facts: This is a laudable move by Google. The company has said that it will develop AI ethically, but it has already faced strong criticism for supplying AI to the military. That said, it  will do little to curb the spread and use of face recognition. Dozens of other companies, including other big US firms like Amazon and Microsoft, will be happy to provide you with face recognition software. What’s more—as a quick search of Github shows—the tools required to build a face identifying system from scratch are widely available.

Global issue: As concerns grow over the ethical implications of AI, some countries are calling for a coordinated international debate about ethical standards. Face recognition would surely be top of the agenda for any such discussion, but given the growing use of the technology in China, it could prove an awkward issue to face up to (sorry).

https://www.technologyreview.com/the-download/612606/google-will-stop-providing-face-recognition-but-it-will-be-hard-to-curb-its-use/

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Report: World’s 1st remote brain surgery via 5G network performed in China

World’s 1st remote brain surgery via 5G network performed in China Published time: 17 Mar, 2019 13:12 ·           A Chinese surgeon has performed the world’s first remote brain surgery using 5G technology, with the patient 3,000km away from the operating doctor. Dr. Ling Zhipei remotely implanted a neurostimulator into his patient’s brain on Saturday, Chinese state-run media  reports . The surgeon manipulated the instruments in the Beijing-based PLAGH hospital from a clinic subsidiary on the southern Hainan island, located 3,000km away. The surgery is said to have lasted three hours and ended successfully. The patient, suffering from Parkinson’s disease, is said to be feeling well after the pioneering operation. The doctor used a computer connected to the next-generation 5G network developed by Chinese tech giant Huawei. The new device enabled a near real-time connection, according to Dr. Ling.  “You barely feel that the patient is 3,000 kilometers away,”  he said.
Read more

BMW traps alleged thief by remotely locking him in car

BMW traps alleged thief by remotely locking him in car Stealer's Wheel? Seattle police department quotes "Watchmen" movie in a recap of the recent arrest. Tech Culture by Gael Fashingbauer Cooper December 4, 2016 5:00 PM PST It's maybe the most satisfying arrest we can imagine. Seattle police caught an alleged car thief by enlisting the help of car maker BMW to both track and then remotely lock the luckless criminal in the very car he was trying to steal. Jonah Spangenthal-Lee, deputy director of communications for the Seattle Police Department, posted a witty summary of the event on the SPD's blog on Wednesday. Turns out if you're inside a stolen car, it's perhaps not the best time to take a nap. "A car thief awoke from a sound slumber Sunday morning (Nov. 27) to find he had been remotely locked inside a stolen BMW, just as Seattle police officers were bearing down on him," Spangenthal-Lee wrote. The suspect found a ke
Read more

Visualizing The Power Of The World's Supercomputers

Visualizing The Power Of The World's Supercomputers   BY TYLER DURDEN FRIDAY, JAN 21, 2022 - 04:15 AM   A supercomputer is a machine that is built to handle billions, if not trillions of calculations at once. Each supercomputer is actually made up of many individual computers (known as nodes) that work together in parallel. A common metric for measuring the performance of these machines is  flops , or  floating point operations per second . In this visualization,  Visual Capitalist's Marcus Lu uses  November 2021 data from  TOP500  to visualize the computing power of the world’s top five supercomputers. For added context, a number of modern consumer devices were included in the comparison. Ranking by Teraflops Because supercomputers can achieve over one quadrillion flops, and consumer devices are much less powerful, we’ve used  teraflops  as our comparison metric. 1 teraflop = 1,000,000,000,000 (1 trillion) flops. Supercomputer Fugaku  was completed in March 202
Read more