Hello readers!
While I was browsing through some blogs today, I came across a post that fascinated me. The post, titled Face to Face, was made by fellow WordPress user koilover. In this post, they touched on the fairly new legal issue of governments using facial recognition within law enforcement. Koilover wrote about how uneasy they felt as in a way this would take away some of their first amendment rights as the faces of people that went to certain rallies or protests would automatically be cataloged. The whole ordeal is seen as a large invasion of privacy, something that many Americans have become very protective of over the past couple of years with the rise of data mining. Back home, my folks don’t really use any kind of social media because they don’t feel a need for it. Everyone they know is within a fifteen-mile radius anyways, there wasn’t a reason to create an account for people to see what they already know. It’s a culture very different from what I have experienced in California. For the first couple of weeks, all of the new folks I met would ask for my social media, and I would have to always respond to their queries with the simple answer: “I don’t have any”. It was only after some heavy consistent probing that I decided to create an account on Facebook, and I must say – it is not my thing. The invasion of privacy that I feel when I have to post pictures of my loved ones on the internet (and give Facebook knowledge on my every preference) is nothing compared to knowing that there could be systems soon in place where my every move is stored into a humongous database.
While Facebook has been at the forefront for some of this discussion in earlier times, now the company that has come under the microscope is Amazon, who has previously stated that they will sell facial recognition devices to any government that buys it from them and ‘promises to use it legally’. Now I don’t know about you guys, but to me, that sounds like a load of bologna. Its large corporations that put small farms like those my friends and family own in Kentucky out of business, and they don’t even have to bat an eyelash. I read up some more on artificial intelligence and facial recognition, and it is absolutely crazy that even the technology we use could be susceptible to some forms of racism. According to an article by VB, most AI machines are tested and therefore built mainly on caucasian men. And while this may not seem like much of a problem if you look like me, or in states like Kentucky where about ninety percent of us are caucasian, in places like California where the diversity is so high, this is simply not acceptable.
Thank you for giving me something to think about koilover. As technology grows and becomes further integrated into our society, it is important to think of the effects that our actions can have.
Have a jolly good evening,
Arlo
Arlo's Blog 