BY KAIROS
Episode #9: Amazon, Seriously?
In episode #8 we shared the story of the Amazon employee who came out against their face recognition product Rekognition’s (never gets easier to spell btw) use by law enforcement. And we applauded them.
So, we started to think perhaps the execs at Amazon would start to take these concerns seriously.
After a summer of criticism leveled at face rec — much of it coming from your friends at Kairos — Amazon had a great chance to throw their not-insignificant-clout behind the issue. AND DO THE RIGHT THING.
Can we guess what happened at a recent All Hands meeting, addressing these concerns?
Find out later on.
First, some linky-poos…
(AI) Art imitating life
The art world was left reeling after a Deep Learning-generated portrait sold for several thousand bucks at Christie’s.
The result — Ahem, well, you know… it kinda reminded us of this masterpiece?
Walk this way
In China’s seemingly unstoppable AI vision, we now get news of their latest surveillance nightmare — ‘gait recognition’.
“You don’t need people’s cooperation for us to be able to recognize their identity,” — is the actual real-life quote from the CEO of the company that created this stuff.
<insert facepalm emoji>
Agelessnessness
This chap from Holland is willing himself younger. Well, on paper at least — short of actually inventing time-travel, he feels it’s his right to knock a few years off the clock and enjoy the ‘benefits’ of middle-age (again).
Look out for him on Tinder btw 👀
Back to Amazon’s Rekognition’s slow motion car crash
Sorry, but we’re just dismayed at the report from BuzzFeed today.
Responding to the recent calls to halt the sale of their face rec tech to law enforcement agencies, Amazon execs— led on the ‘All Hands’ call by none other than Jeff Bezos — defended their commercial interests in these areas.
After countless evidence of their technology falling short with regards to accuracy, investor uproar, civil liberty petitions, and bemused expressions from anyone with a heart — Amazon continue to sell into the most contentious and divisive use case. The surveillance of US Citizens.
“An employee who spoke to BuzzFeed News said they and their colleagues were disappointed in the response.”
Us too, Buzzfeed. Us too.
Still, it’s news like this that makes us even more passionate about continuing to solve the problems in face rec bias and ensuring an ethical approach to deploying our face recognition technology. We’re not going to give up the fight.
The Identity Economy™ is written and curated by the team at Kairos.com.
If you want to learn more about Kairos and how Face Recognition can transform your business — drop us a line 😃
