Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ The two-year fight to stop Amazon from selling face recognition to the police

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

Today's news features stories on Microsoft's and Amazon's decision to follow IBM's lead and stop developing general facial recognition technology. But as this article shows, these decisions didn't simply materialize out of thin air; they followed years of lobbying and activism. People putting in the work. It includes a letter written by nearly 70 civil rights and research organizations, 150,000 petition signatures, another letter from Amazon's own shareholders, a memo from employees, a foundational study on the racial biases and inaccuracies built into the company's technology, another study called Gender Shades on the gender and racial biases embedded in commercial face recognition systems, another paper that once again found huge technical inaccuracies, a defense of the work by nearly 80 AI researchers, and finally police reform bill that includes a proposal to limit face recognition in a law enforcement context.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Nov 21, 2024 5:29 p.m.

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