Another engineer was hired to perfect a facial recognition algorithm that was derived from academic papers. The result: a system that uses what Mr. Ton-That described as a “state-of-the-art neural net” to convert all the images into mathematical formulas, or vectors, based on facial geometry — like how far apart a person’s eyes are.
That is a physical dimension and will be irrelevant unless an object of known size is also in the image. Also needed are the exact distances of the object and the face from the focal plane of the camera.
Because the police upload photos of people they’re trying to identify, Clearview possesses a growing database of individuals who have attracted attention from law enforcement. The company also has the ability to manipulate the results that the police see. After the company realized I was asking officers to run my photo through the app, my face was flagged by Clearview’s systems and for a while showed no matches. When asked about this, Mr. Ton-That laughed and called it a “software bug.”
"Every program has at least one bug.
Every program can be reduced in size by at least one line.
Therefore, every program can be reduced to a single line - which is a bug."
Have we not yet learned that programs are still written by fallible humans? AI will continue, in the foreseeable future, to be built on human-based 'engineering, rules and decisions.
Woodrow Hartzog, a professor of law and computer science at Northeastern University in Boston, sees Clearview as the latest proof that facial recognition should be banned in the United States.
“We’ve relied on industry efforts to self-police and not embrace such a risky technology, but now those dams are breaking because there is so much money on the table,” Mr. Hartzog said. “I don’t see a future where we harness the benefits of face recognition technology without the crippling abuse of the surveillance that comes with it. The only way to stop it is to ban it.”
I will vote for this man!
Asked about the implications of bringing such a power into the world, Mr. Ton-That seemed taken aback.
“I have to think about that,” he said. “Our belief is that this is the best use of the technology.”
...otherwise, there's not enough money in it! "The love of money is the root..."
