Last week, Amazon made the unexpected move of calling for regulation on facial recognition.
Facial recognition is one of the fastest-growing areas of the artificial intelligence industry.
It has drawn interest from both the public and private sector and is already worth billions of dollars.
Amazons latest announcement comes as a break from its previous approach toward setting legal constraints on its technology.
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One of the jobs of senior leadership is to make the right decision, even when its unpopular.
So Punkes announcement might look like a turnabout for the company.
Amazon is not the first company to call for regulation of facial recognition.
Punke makes sure those positive uses dont go unnoticed.
But facial recognition adds new profiling capabilities that can serve very sinister purposes.
Take the example of the missing children of India.
The government already had access to millions of hours worth of surveillance video.
It could follow anyone anywhere, or for that matter, everyone everywhere.
It could do this at any time or even all the time.
This use of facial recognition technology could unleash mass surveillance on an unprecedented scale, Smith writes.
For instance, consider Amazons drive to put itsfacial recognition technology to smart home security cameras.
Part of the calls for regulation recommend transparency.
Amazons Punke also underlines the need for transparency and notice in both the public and commercial sector.
But the problem is, theres no clear definition on the ethical and fair use of facial recognition technology.
What does misuse mean when there are no rules on use versus misuse?
Clare Garvie, a fellow at Georgetown Universitys Center on Privacy and Technology,toldWiredin an interview.
Current facial recognition technologies usemachine learning.
In the blog post, Punke recommends, law enforcement should use the recommended 99% confidence threshold.
Should facial recognition be used to automate decisions?
Should law enforcement automatically issue arrest warrants for people flagged by facial recognition systems?
In his post, Punke clearly underlines the need for keeping a human in the loop.
But without legal safeguards, government agencies might eventually hand over critical decision-making to AI algorithms.
This was accentuated in the controversy surrounding Googles development ofcomputer vision algorithmsfor the Department of Defense (DoD).
But in critical domains, regulation ensures responsible innovation while preventing damaging practices.
The law will prohibit such a car from being sold to consumers and driven on roads.
The same thing goes for the facial recognition industry.
Without regulation, companies might sacrifice ethics, privacy and moral standards for the sake of clinching deals.
And therein lies the most important benefit to companies like Amazon and Microsoft.
Googlegrudgingly relinquishedits involvement in DoDs Project Maven after it faced backlash from employees and AI experts.
Microsoft also facedcriticism from its employeesbecause of a controversial contract with ICE.
In many ways, big techs support for regulating facial recognition is like its support fornet neutralityandGDPR rules.
