merlerker-facereadings

Happy Things by Kyle McDonald & Theo Watson (link)

Dug a bit into this project and I love the concept – it posts a screenshot of your computer whenever you smile (w the implicit assumption that something on your screen made you smile). Sadly most of the screenshots showcased are people testing out the app 🙁 Would want to “live” with it for a while.

Useful tip: Aligning eye position to do face averaging.

 

Last Week Tonight / Against Black Inclusion … / How I’m Fighting Bias …

Reflecting on why exactly we need to be wary of applying facial recognition / “coptech.”

1) As we rely on facial recognition more, the times it is wrong are disastrous. The points where an infrastructure (technologies that are so embedded/hidden in the way we do things that they’re invisible) become visible are where it breaks/fails.

2) The benefit is not worth the invasion of privacy. There’s always going to be some terrible human who has the power to abuse access to personal information and will do it (like the Russian app demo’d for creeping on women, finding excuses to arrest BLM protesters)

3) Reinforces existing privileges in our society. Lack of inclusion/recognition of black faces – proposed as a form of privacy protection by Hassein, but as long as law enforcement uses facial recognition that increases the risk of misidentification.

 

Agree with John Oliver then that we need laws that require a person’s permission to use facial recognition on them, or stop developing facial recognition entirely. And instead, let’s use it to make art! (I think someone notable said that it’s the best use of surveillance tech.)