FBI, Department of Defense, and Recognition Shock (Faces)

With the help of Mohar Chatterjee and Derek Robertson

In Beijing, some street corners have dozens of cameras track citizens. Moscow begins facial recognition payment systems at metro stations. The London Police use this software to “deal with serious crime.“

For most of the world, this is clear: facial recognition technology exists, it is used, and it does not matter that some countries, including our own, mock this technology as invasion of privacy.

What is perhaps more surprising is that some of these taunts can be… richif not frankly hypocritical. Pile of documents received by The Washington Post exposed the government’s attempts to do exactly what the US says they won’t do: spy on citizens. For years, the FBI and the Department of Defense have been heavily involved in the research and development of facial recognition technology, hoping that it could be used in public places such as subway stations and streets to identify or track citizens without their consent.

And now legislators are taking notice and putting the technology right in their sights. While it’s hard to predict what Congress will do on any given topic, let alone cutting-edge technology, this is the kind of groundbreaking news that could make a splash in policy making for years to come.

There are currently no federal laws telling you Can not track citizens with facial recognition software. But several lawmakers, including a Democratic senator. Ed Markey from Massachusetts wants to change that. He plans to renew efforts to pass legislation to limit the use of such software by federal agencies. This measure was first introduced three years ago.

“We cannot allow the federal government to weave a surveillance network that invades the privacy of Americans through facial recognition and biometric technology, treating each of us as suspects in a rampant investigation,” Markey told Digital Future Daily in a statement.

The co-founders include a roll call of liberal icons such as Sens. Bernie Sanders (Italy) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts), as well as stalwart Democrats in the House of Representatives, including Representatives. Pramila Jayapal (Washington State), Earl Blumenauer (Oregon State) and Barbara Lee (California State) and others. But so far no Republicans have signed the bill.

Law on the moratorium on facial recognition and biometric technologies specifically target facial recognition and other technologies because they create “serious privacy and civil liberties issues and disproportionately harm marginalized communities,” the lawmakers wrote, citing reports of police misconduct.

Longtime advocates of limiting facial recognition agree that it’s time to act.

Rep. Yvette Clark (DN.Y.) called reports of the government’s facial recognition efforts “deeply troubling”, especially for people of color and women. often misidentified software in the past. She co-sponsored the Facial Recognition Act of 2022, which aimed to restrict or prohibit police from using facial recognition software.

“Without a comprehensive regulatory network, the credibility of this law enforcement technology is worrying, where the risk of mistaken identity can be extremely dangerous,” Clarke said in a statement to Digital Future Daily. “Our communities should not be enslaved live under this often wrong microscope.”

These are the first days in the debate. And as we noted above, it’s always a guessing game trying to figure out what Capitol Hill will end up doing. But Democrats and Republicans gathered together in the past to blow up facial recognition technology. So it’s entirely possible that as details emerge about the United States’ growing interest in its development, Congress will finally get a chance to pass some guidelines.

Meanwhile, outside experts have been sounding the regulatory alarm for years.

Key guardrails are needed to make sure facial recognition software is used properly, according to James Andrew Lewis and William Krampler of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. outlined in the report. They must address issues related to the escape of control of autonomous technologies, transparency to the public about how software is used, and proper oversight, among a number of other topics.

Drawing a line against its use in public places, federal officials have long argued that facial recognition is critical to fighting terrorism and crime. There is also the potential for it to spread to the private sector where researchers work. surveillance development which can determine who you are friends with based on facial recognition.

Grassroots movements to impose restrictions on the use of facial recognition, such as the ACLU’s suit to obtain documents, may take some time to bear fruit, but they are “more likely to produce long-term political outcomes that balance the interests of all parties.” society” than the government’s original policy, writes Paul Charré of the Center for a New American Security in his A new book Four battlefields.

“Good management is not always fast management,” he writes.

Salesforce introduced EinsteinGPT Today is an artificial intelligence product developed in collaboration with OpenAI aimed at helping enterprise merchants communicate with their existing customers and potentially find new ones (so-called “customer relationship management”). A group of tech reporters (including your correspondent) saw EinsteinGPT in action in a live demo Monday morning.

EinsteinGPT can obtain company information (including key contacts) from the Internet or from the company’s own databases and generate text for emails and Slack messages. At every stage, Salesforce emphasized that a person needs to go out on any action taken by EinsteinGPT, such as sending a newsletter to customers.

I spoke with dr. Brendan Keegan, lecturer at Maynooth University in Ireland who researches the application of AI in marketing, on how the debut of generative AI in Salesforce will change the way companies talk to each other about the business things they do (the notorious B2B space).

In short: this is not a slam dunk.

“B2B is a relationship,” the doctor said. Keegan. Corporate buyers and suppliers enter into long-term contracts, and many of these relationships are based on human interaction. Keegan said. He mentioned Hank Hill, a propane salesman from “king of the hillto explain why a sales rep with years of experience and knowledge in selling a particular product can find it hard to swallow the pill of generative AI.

When you are told that the new system will “basically do your job for you – it will communicate with customers, identify potential customers, target them, monitor all interactions”, this can cause “frustration” in the client. technology among intended users, the doctor said. Keegan.

And there is the specter of data privacy. “Trust is strength,” the doctor said. Keegan. Salesforce needs their own customers to trust EinsteinGPT technology before they want to use it.

TrailblazerDX’s Salesforce developers seemed to be aware of this particular hurdle, making several references to a certain Queens arachnid superhero during an EinsteinGPT demo: “With great power comes great responsibility,” said Clara Shi, CEO of Salesforce Service Cloud. Although EinsteinGPT is connected to the Salesforce data cloud, the Salesforce developers emphasized that their cloud architecture will allow their customers to mark their data as “private”. — Mohar Chatterjee