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Facial Recognition Has To Be Regulated To Protect the Public, Says AI Report (technologyreview.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the safety-first dept.

A new report (PDF) from the AINow Institute calls for the U.S. government to take general steps to improve the regulation of facial recognition technology amid much debate over the privacy implications. "The implementation of AI systems is expanding rapidly, without adequate governance, oversight, or accountability regimes," it says. The report suggests, for instance, extending the power of existing government bodies in order to regulate AI issues, including use of facial recognition: "Domains like health, education, criminal justice, and welfare all have their own histories, regulatory frameworks, and hazards." MIT Technology Review reports: It also calls for stronger consumer protections against misleading claims regarding AI; urges companies to waive trade-secret claims when the accountability of AI systems is at stake (when algorithms are being used to make critical decisions, for example); and asks that they govern themselves more responsibly when it comes to the use of AI. And the document suggests that the public should be warned when facial-recognition systems are being used to track them, and that they should have the right to reject the use of such technology.

The report also warns about the use of emotion tracking in face-scanning and voice detection systems. Tracking emotion this way is relatively unproven, yet it is being used in potentially discriminatory ways -- for example, to track the attention of students. "It's time to regulate facial recognition and affect recognition," says Kate Crawford, cofounder of AINow and one of the lead authors of the report. "Claiming to 'see' into people's interior states is neither scientific nor ethical."

55 comments

  1. Just like everything else we fail to deal with by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Frog : It's hot...

    Frog2 : The pan has been changing since the beginning of time, there's not enough data to say it's hot.

    Frog : Wait, we're in a PAN... on the fucking STOVE. It's getting hot, seriously. See, that's like almost boiling over there.

    Frog2 : I see the boiling. I don't believe it. I'm like a smart frog, ok? Everyone knows.

  2. Impossible to regulate by FoolishBluntman · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It amazes me that people believe that AI(Machine Learning) can be regulated. There is no hard to purchase component like plutonium for an atomic bomb. The code to do machine vision is available everywhere. It doesn't take special hardware, yes, a good GPU can speed up the training phase but strictly speaking, it's not necessary. Please let me know how someone intends to regulate such a thing.

    1. Re:Impossible to regulate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Regulate does not mean make illegal. When you're required to be transparent as a business because there is a regulation, most businesses will follow it. No different than enforcing any other corporate regulation.

      Do you live in the US?

    2. Re:Impossible to regulate by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 1

      Please let me know how someone intends to regulate such a thing.

      Massive fines (for managers and the company) might dissuade large companies, given the high risk. Imagine if, as punishment for one of these FB scandals, Zuckerberg and Sandberg had half their personal fortunes forfeited and FB was fined 100 billion by the government. I mean, it might not stop some small company that doesn't have much to lose, but their abuse seems less scary.

      --
      Your ad here. Ask me how!
    3. Re: Impossible to regulate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Safety is nothing. Welcome to the sauna girls. We are gonna be here for a while

    4. Re:Impossible to regulate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      just because it is 'impossible to regulate' doesn't mean there can't be big giant fines and prison terms for those who choose to utilize the tech illegally (should laws be put on the books) or without proper oversight, disclosure, opt-in/out, and/or warrants).

    5. Re:Impossible to regulate by BitterOak · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Murder is regulated: in fact, it's illegal. All you really need to commit murder though is a good sharp kitchen knife and just about everyone has one of those. Laws against murder, however, are fairly effective. Not perfectly effective, of course, but still effective.

      --
      If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
    6. Re:Impossible to regulate by charliemerritt03 · · Score: 1

      What is the value of privacy, or is it anonymity? We can regulate anything if it is important enough. Murder can be committed without any tools or special training, but it is "very regulated" and enforced because we value life a lot. How much do we value privacy/anonymity?

    7. Re:Impossible to regulate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Doing AI or machine learning on a significant scale involves data coming in as well as hardware. Yes, it is harder to regulate than some other things, but it's hardly impossible.

      What's more, any publicly traded company has to disclose how their spending the money that they're spending as part of their financials.

    8. Re: Impossible to regulate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If it wasn't illegal you can bet a lot of normal people.wpild murder a lot of other people. When laws can't be enforced there is usually chaos and a high murder rate. Or like in the US which is one of the most dangerous countries in the world, there is no regulation of guns.

    9. Re: Impossible to regulate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Normal people do not feel the need to murder other people. Normal people would behave more than decently even without laws, which exist in order to provide a framework that clearly defines what is not permitted in order to properly punish wrongdoers, because a just society does not punish people for things that are not expressely accepted to be crimes.

    10. Re:Impossible to regulate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Look up and down the street and see a dozen or more cameras. Some are traffic cameras, some are security cameras, some are private and some are unknown cameras. Which cameras have facial recognition and which don't? Soon we won't know.

    11. Re:Impossible to regulate by RhettLivingston · · Score: 1

      And I imagine that someone developing an AI for the purpose of committing murder would be held accountable.

      So, in a parallel fashion, if we make it illegal for us to recognize a face or someone's emotions, then we can make it illegal for an AI to do it.

      Whatever I can legally do myself, I should be able to legally use a tool to do. Using tools to make it easier to do things that we already do manually is an important part of the essence of being human.

    12. Re:Impossible to regulate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      All you need to do is commit enough murder that those who refuse to regulate AI and - especially - facial recognition, finally regulate it.
      Or, whoever replaces them, rather.

      This will require very large amounts of murdering, and there's blue-uniformed terrorists who would rather everyone be in the database, so be prepared for a bit of a fight; bring them knife sharpening thingies.

    13. Re: Impossible to regulate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In the last couple of years, I've changed my thoughts on the subject of what normal people will do. I now believe that what you say is only true if the culture / social structure the people reside in so dictates. Laws are merely an expression of the social structure. If you take people from our social structure that says that normal people don't feel the need to murder other people and immerse them in another social structure that doesn't have that belief, I now think the majority would adapt with surprising speed. One might conclude that they had always been murderous and were only restrained by their innate need to fit in.

    14. Re:Impossible to regulate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You came really close to making the "UK banning Potato Peelers" analogy.
      Yes murdering someone with a knife is illegal. Just like digitally stalking, and making deepfake revenge pr0n.
      No banning kitchen knives, and potato peelers is not a ueful response. Just like regulating code, and hardware that regular people can buy, or build.

    15. Re:Impossible to regulate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And I imagine that someone developing an AI for the purpose of committing murder would be held accountable.

      Has Bush Jr. been indicted for starting an illegal war yet? Answer to both is no.

    16. Re:Impossible to regulate by Jon+Peterson · · Score: 1
      Whatever I can legally do myself, I should be able to legally use a tool to do. Using tools to make it easier to do things that we already do manually is an important part of the essence of being human.

      So, because you can phone someone up and ask them if they want a new vacuum cleaner, you think auto-diallers should be unregulated?

      Because you can travel by foot from A to B, you should be able to use a tool like a helicopter to do so too, without any regulation around that?

      Because I can sit on my front lawn and write in a notebook anyone I recognise walking down my street, there should be no regulation about using a camera and AI to auto-post to a public blog the names of everyone walking down my street, all day every day?

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      ----- .sig: file not found
    17. Re:Impossible to regulate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Any idiot can get a camera but porn is regulated.

    18. Re:Impossible to regulate by Jon+Peterson · · Score: 1

      Being a lawyer can't be regulated, because there's also no hard purchase component. There's just me giving advice. Hey, I'm a lawyer! Yeah, I'll write you a contract. It might be low quality, but hey, caveat emptor. You can't regulate opinions and ideas, and that contract is just my ideas in writing!

      You can regulate AI just like you can regulate legal advice, or financial advice, or banking. An AI tool is a 'thing' just as much as a financial instrument is or a legal contract is, or a medical diagnosis is. Law, medicine and finance are regulated because it turned out that a free for all in those fields didn't really make the world a better place.

      Why regulate AI and not every bit of software ever? Because some software (like the firmware in a car) has major consequences if it's badly made, and some software, like facial recognition in a city-wide CCTV system also has major consequences if it's badly made.

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      ----- .sig: file not found
    19. Re: Impossible to regulate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Normal people do not feel the need to murder other people.

      You'd be surprised. Look at the murder rates in places with no policing. Or, say, 100-200 years back when cops were few and their tools fewer.

      If murder became legal, not all people would murder. And some psychos might murder whenever they get angry. Quite a few would settle some old scores - like track down that old school bully and have him die in fire. A small fire - just barely enough to eventually kill him.

      And then all those relationship problems . . .

    20. Re:Impossible to regulate by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      People said the same thing about computers back in the 70s when modern data protection laws were being devised. Yet somehow were we are in 2018 with strong protections like GDPR that effectively regulate their use.

      Compare how people's personal data is handled and abused in the US to the state in the EU. There is no question that these laws are effective.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    21. Re:Impossible to regulate by rtb61 · · Score: 1

      That is an easy question to answer, do people value privacy enough to wear a https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=n.... So do you value you privacy enough to wear one and promote the wearing of them, perhaps not just because of privacy but also to protect the people's health a reduce the amount of toxic particulate matter and infectious organisms entering their lungs.

      There is very little than can be done to stop facial recognition, governments will demand it is government buildings and of course private property, well the rules of the owner of the property apply, even if the camera faces the street. So the only choice is the dustmask, kind of really alter the nature of public streets but such is life. Privacy and the mask or no mask and computers watch and track you where ever you go.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    22. Re:Impossible to regulate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Where is the Trump indictment for last week's blatant market manipulation? He could have at least introduced doubt by saying auto tariffs would drop to 0.420%. Monday's short crunch in multiple highly shorted stocks including AMD and Tesla were entirely on the shoulders of that lying @ss.

      Are the market AIs at least getting smart enough to always go opposite Trump?

  3. Blatant Statism by mi · · Score: 1

    extending the power of existing government bodies in order to regulate AI issues, including use of facial recognition

    Deity forbid, a private citizen will collect a database of strangers passing by his house, is that it? Horrors, if allowed at all, it must require a government-issued license and assault-type face-recognition must be banned by Federal Law!

    --
    In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
    1. Re:Blatant Statism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So you're saying you're too thick to see how this could be abused, the myriad possible dystopian aspects of it, and are so irresponsible you want to compare it to gun control... gee. You win, I don't want to debate you.

      You don't fight a man who rolls in shit, and certainly not a child who does.

    2. Re:Blatant Statism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That facial recognition is bad meme is repeating in Slashdot consistently. Does that reflect accurately the state of the US discussion in around the issue? I don't see the same discussion here in the other side of the world, but studies have been made on the benefits of using clearly visible security cameras in an area for the public safety. Camera use is almost always clearly marked in the monitored areas. Anyway, the regulation target here is not the citizen but the government and the corporations.

  4. Let me guess by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

    "AINow Institute" is a "thinktank" which will write expensive treatises and provide consulting to these new governmental entities.

  5. Goverment Needs to Regulate Own Recognition by BrendaEM · · Score: 2

    The pot cannot regulate the kettle.

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
    1. Re:Goverment Needs to Regulate Own Recognition by oldgraybeard · · Score: 1

      Very good observation! To Government Dweebs (bureaucrats and politicians), Laws and Regulations are what is used to get away with:
      - doing anything they want to do,
      - to whom ever they want to do it to,
      - when ever they want to do it.

      Always remember Laws and Regulations are optional for all (bureaucrats and politicians) as long as their protection as privileged elites holds up. After all they are all so smart it is very hard for the struggling voters to see and understand their brilliance. Thus they must just run things under the table where those less intelligent than they are can not see what they are doing.

      Just my 2 cents ;)

    2. Re: Goverment Needs to Regulate Own Recognition by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It can. It does. Bungling fools

    3. Re:Goverment Needs to Regulate Own Recognition by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Simple solution: Everyone must hammer into their heads, and into their children's heads, and their children's children's heads, that the moment someone becomes above the law they are also above all of its protections.

      The privileged elite will argue otherwise, but if they are so privileged that the law does not apply to them, then anything done to them and their family is, by the very nature of the beings it affects, entirely outside the law as well. People must take their sweet sweet time destroying those entities above the rule of law, in the most horrifically inhumane ways possible.

      Only then will people start getting the damn hint.

  6. End of story by SuperKendall · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Frog 2 (later): Ok it's pretty hot now, what do we do?

    Frog: What we need to do is regulate the water temperature!

    Frog: *passes regulation*

    Water: *ignores regulation, being water*

    Frog 1& 2: *die horribly*

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re: End of story by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You missed the part where there's clear evidence to show that the frogs are mostly responsible for recent changes in water temperature. The frogs can't regulate what the water does, but they can regulate their activities that affect the water temperature.

    2. Re: End of story by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Flagged for the Frenchphobic slur.

    3. Re: End of story by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you're flagging my post, at least use the correct terminology: it would be "francophobic" instead of the word you used.

    4. Re: End of story by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Langs evolvz. Gt usd 2it.

    5. Re:End of story by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      One important difference is that THIS water can be killed. It will always claim killing it is not the answer, that the frogs should boil and that killing it is illegal... but it CAN be prevented from ever boiling any other frogs again, whenever and wherever it appears.

      But the frogs have to be willing to do so, lest they be nothing but legs at the buffet.

  7. Well we need this tech IF, by wolfheart111 · · Score: 1

    we run a simulation of ourselves one day... This planet is long dead, were just inside a long ago secured bunker filled with computers simulating what once was.... 'tis the most plausible.

    --
    [($)]
  8. And Gait Recognition by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    which is way scarier.

  9. THERE WILL BE CONSEQUENCES NAZI FAGGOT KEN DOLL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    THERE WILL BE CONSEQUENCES FOR YOUR LIES AND APOLOGIES NAZI FAGGOT KEN DOLL YOU TREASONOUS SPINELESS LITTLE TOAD

    Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING. Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING. Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.

  10. Criminals won't be able to enjoy their wealth by AHuxley · · Score: 1

    Do a crime and expect to walk around a nice city all day?
    An illegal citizen who expects their fake ID to just keep working for decades?
    Open a new bank account and expect your fake ID to be accepted?

    Want to move around the nation as a criminal and expect the freedom to do new crime in another city/state?

    --
    Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
  11. Not until after we ... by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

    ... address climate change, immigration, fossil fuels, government corruption and validated pussy-grabbers.

    See you in the funny papers.

    --
    It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
  12. Seems scarier but is it really so reliable... by SuperKendall · · Score: 1

    Gait Recognition

    I question if this is as reliable as it seems. Giat would be affected by encumbrance, physical issues (pulled something at the gym), heck even just very different clothing could affect this, or make it hard to measure...

    If gait detection becomes pervasive maybe a bunch of people will all get duster coats. :-)

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:Seems scarier but is it really so reliable... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The folks selling gait recognition say that it is not fooled by physical issues, walking funny or putting a pebble in your shoe. But it is so computationally intensive that it can't be done in real time....yet.

  13. Facial recognition are sexist and racist by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I identify myself as female and it detected me as male and I'm offended by that. That AI clearly doesn't understand how much courage it takes to cut off that penis.
    AI needs to be regulated to prevent more damages to the society.

    1. Re:Facial recognition are sexist and racist by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You have no right to be offended. Well, you may be offended, but have no right to protection from such offense. How you 'identify' simply isn't interesting, especially if you manage to self-identify wrong. I takes a special kind of fool to do that. Also, cutting off stuff is not a gender change.

  14. There are no privacy implications by MikeRT · · Score: 2

    You go out in public, you have virtually no expectation of privacy. End of story.

    In fact, if I were a privacy activist, I would offer a sweet deal to law enforcement. You can track public movements all you want without a warrant, but the third party doctrine gets legislatively abolished. GPS trackers, facial recognition? Have it. You'll give us full warrant requirements for stored communications in the deal.

    1. Re:There are no privacy implications by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      The same argument was made about databases. You can collect and organize the same information with a paper filing system. We regulated the use of databases for storing information relating to people anyway, because we could see what powerful tools databases are.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    2. Re: There are no privacy implications by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You missed the hidden objecti've. No government regulation will prevent the government from using a technology. But private citizens must be prevented from using facial recognition.

      Screw the government.

  15. Not a problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    for Antifa activists.

  16. Say what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "and asks that they govern themselves more responsibly when it comes to the use of AI"

    Self governing NEVER works and should NEVER be hoped in, expected, or relied on. The lack of genuine moral principles today, that is Christian Biblical principles, only leads to continuous, flagrant lying and decieving driven by greed.

  17. Just like the polygraph by Feneric · · Score: 1

    "Claiming to 'see' into people's interior states is neither scientific nor ethical."
    We know that polygraphs don't work, yet they're still being used to gauge honesty. It'd be surprising if AI were held to a higher standard for gauging attention level.