Facial recognition systems are now being implemented in airports, shopping malls, and even deployed on the streets of huge cities. Mostly, law enforcement agencies buy them from big companies like Amazon, which is why they are subject to a lot of criticism. During his lecture at Stanford University, Mictosoft President Brad Smith (not to be confused with the CEO) revealed that they recently had to deny the police to implement their system in police cars. The company had a number of reasons for this.
According to Brad Smith, the rapid development of technology is helping government agencies to carry out total surveillance of people. Of course, technology can help catch criminals, but it can also easily violate human rights. If desired, cameras with a face recognition system can be hung on the streets right now, but in which case it will be extremely difficult to reverse this step.
The president of Microsoft drew attention to the fact that most often artificial intelligence is trained to recognize faces based on photographs of white people. This may lead to the fact that the police will more often involve in interrogations of persons who have been considered suspicious by the system's error. And this is just the beginning - everything can get to the point that the technology will be deployed throughout the territory of huge cities and violate people's privacy.
China is a good example of where this can lead. There, facial recognition technology has been introduced into even schools, and works as part of a social rating system. This has already led to negative consequences - for example, millions of people were deprived of the opportunity to travel.
With all this, Microsoft sees advantages in face recognition technology. Yes, she was involved in introducing a face analysis system into police cars, but at the same time allowed her to be used in prisons. In her opinion, there is still benefit from the system - in a confined space, watching only a certain group of people, it can help to maintain order.
What do you think about the face recognition system?
Ramis Ganiev