The most striking and disheartening thing about “Against Black Inclusion in Facial Recognition” is the realization that the system itself is so broken that people would rather face the racism of machines unable to detect their faces than face the racism that would occur if the machines were able to detect their faces. The fact that people would rather not be included at all to protect themselves… it really makes you think.
I really enjoy Last Week Tonight, so any excuse to watch it I will take! In one part, there’s a Russian TV presenter demonstrating the app FindFace, under the scenario where you see a pretty girl at a coffee shop and are too nervous to approach her. Apparently, all you have to do is take a photo of her and wait for the FindFace results that will bring up her “profile.” Whether that’s Instagram, Facebook, or FindFace’s own hypothetical social media platform (I don’t know), it is TERRIFYING! I mean, what a way to empower the creeps of this world!
As technology advances in these ways, it should really only be in the hands of ethical people… whom I don’t really think exist among the elites who would be making and accessing this technology. In fact, this reminds me of a demonstration of deep fakes, where whichever company that had developed it (someone recognizable like Microsoft or Sony or something, but I can’t remember) showed how after getting a bunch of samples of someone’s voice, you could type in whatever text you wanted and it could be said perfectly in that person’s voice. They said that, though they had developed the technology well, they would not be releasing it to the public… for obvious reasons!