
Western Academia Helps Build China’s Automated Racism - sexy_seedbox
https://codastory.com/authoritarian-tech/western-academia-china-automated-racism/
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ETHisso2017
I hate to be _that guy /girl_, but aren't all facial recognition algorithms by
definition racist? In the case of China, it seems like the real issue is that
the racism seems to be an open feature of the product rather than something
carefully cloaked in bland PR-speak.

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threezero
Yes, race is a feature of facial recognition. Is that racist? This algorithm
seems to be specifically built to detect non-ethnic Chinese faces to further
discrimination.

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aznpwnzor
China's problem has always been how to maintain control through the ebb and
flows of history. When centralized governments fail in China, they fail HARD.
(This in no way is a moral defense of what they do.)

With mounting economic pressure from internal growth slowing down and n-times-
burned global trading partners, the current regime is up against the wall. The
one BIG difference this time is that AI has such effective policing
effectiveness. Previously marshaling paramilitaries and corralling local
warlords were the (hard to scale) tools available. They were not the best
tools, because when the central govt fails, the empowered local forces have
enough strength to wreak havoc.

AI is so powerful in China because AI is mostly bound by dataset size (at our
current stage of research). And if there's one thing that's cheap for the CCP
to get, it's training data.

If there's a time for dynasty building, it is now. The CCP may be the most
resilient thanks to AI.

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whoevercares
Exactly, Chinese leads CVPR or any other CV conference. Not so long from now
China will also leads AI

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jacquesm
That mortgage has to be paid.

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codedokode
There are almost no ethical uses for facial recognition. It is a technology
for criminals.

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crimsonalucard
What about unlocking my front door with a facial recognition lock. Are you
telling me that's not ethical?

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logfromblammo
Exactly so. A face is an identifier, not an authenticator.

No biometric should ever unlock any lock by itself. It should only determine
which thing-you-know or thing-you-have is usable for unlocking that lock.

So if your front door recognizes your face, it decides that the RFID fob you
typically keep in your pocket is good enough to unlock whenever that gets
close enough to read, or that hearing the vocal sounds for "rezrov" or "open
up" is an acceptable key.

Otherwise, a housebreaker could take some photos with a telescopic lens and
print your face onto a mannequin head with hydro-dip printing or silicone-pad
transfer printing, and unlock your house with it. Forever. Or at least until
you get a new face.

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crimsonalucard
The technology doesn't exist yet but I'm talking about a facial recognition
technology that is on par if not better than the human eye.

Such a technology is on par with a lock. Because it is basically impossible
for any human to imitate another human to a degree where they can murder
someone and pretend to live his life. It's easier to copy a key than it is to
reproduce a fully identical face.

Twins being the exception to all of this, but with facial recognition devices
that beat humans this still remains a possibility as no two faces are alike.

