Artificial intelligence (AI) is improving medical diagnosis, informing farmers where to fertilize, interpreting IoT sensors, driving cars, and permeating almost everything. Ethics questions are on people's minds because maybe some things should not be done, even if they can be done.
Facial recognition technology is like that. The government of China is heavily invested in facial recognition for the purpose of surveilling and judging all its citizens. Each person is given a score. Its 600 million cameras enable totalitarian control at a whole new level.
But we in the West consider that application of AI to be oppressive, a violation of our ethical standards. Facial recognition is used in the West for other purposes, like helping law enforcement identify criminals. But lots of mistakes are made, especially racially-related.
IBM has taken a stand. They sent a letter to U.S. Congressional leaders saying:
"IBM no longer offers general purpose IBM facial recognition or analysis software. IBM firmly opposes . . [it] for mass surveillance, racial profiling, violations of basic human rights and freedoms . . ."
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