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Facial recognition technologies pose complex ethical and technical challenges. Neglecting to unpack this complexity- to measure it, analyze it and then articulate it to others -is a disservice to those, including ourselves, who are most impacted by its careless deployment.
About Face: A Survey of Facial Recognition Evaluation, presented at the AAAI 2020 Workshop on AI Evaluation
Background
What is it
Classification of face images to identify specific people or to predict attributes such as gender.
Uses
- labeling people in social media images
- finding people in a crowd (identifying suspects in crimes, missing children)
- identifying customers (for airline boarding, touchless checkout, etc.)
- unlocking devices
Potential concerns
- Inaccurate especially for minorities
- GenderShades summary video
- Hill, K. (2020, July 24). Wrongfully Accused By an Algorithm. The New York Times.
- Privacy and surveillance
News
- Some cities have banned facial recognition
- An Update On Our Use of Face Recognition | Meta: “We’re shutting down the Face Recognition system on Facebook.”
Provocations
- Are some uses bad? (predicting likelihood to commit a crime? identifying political dissenters?)
- How to balance privacy with safety (e.g., identifying missing children)?
- How might facial recognition be re-imagined for good?
Further reading
- Tawana Petty Interview (second video on this page) about Project Green Light in Detroit
- Portland’s facial recognition ordinance: coverage by The Hill
- https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/10/opinion/facial-recognition-race.html