Is the search-by-face function on photo apps the most useful tool of the last 1k years? Probably not. If anything, it shows us that computers are great at doing some things we aren’t.
Like identifying individual faces among many, which 80 years of technological developments have made relatively easy.
But a new study from Mozilla fellow Deborah Raji and Genevieve Fried — a congressional advisor on algorithmic accountability — shows these developments have come at a cost:
Raji and Fried examined 130 facial recognition datasets across 4 eras and found that consent has been gradually pushed out the window:
In the first era, consented photo shoots made up 100% of facial recognition data sources. Today, they make up just 8.7%, with web search comprising the rest.
Training models on millions of images improves the tech through scale, but it also raises serious concerns regarding wide-scale bias and privacy issues.
Studies have shown that white males are falsely matched with mug shots less often than other groups, and a test of Amazon’s Rekognition software showed it misidentified 28 NFL players as criminals.
… that startups and a Chinese military academy obtained before they were removed.
Facial recognition is moving a bit too fast for some: Boston, San Francisco, Oakland, and Portland have outlawed “city use of the surveillance technology,” per CNN.
This seems to be a reasonable measure; at a minimum, it’ll give people less of a reason to put on (and this is actually a thing) anti-facial-recognition makeup: