Axon , America ’s biggest police eubstance tv camera manufacturing business , is presently banning the use of face realization technology in its product after its independent ethics boardsaidThursday that the “ technology is not yet reliable enough to rationalize its use on body - break camera ” due to “ inadequate and undependable public presentation across races , ethnicity , genders and other identity group . ”
Once primarily known for selling the Taser , Axon is now a $ 300 million company selling a suite of technologies including police body cameras to 17,000 law enforcement agencies in over 100 commonwealth . The fellowship also betray so - called “ smart weapons ” for military and government exercise .
Over the last decade , Axon has shifted heavily to selling police body photographic camera . As the engineering science has proliferate , polite liberties experts are increasingly worried that the devices can be used to covertly introduce heavy criticize face recognition technology into cities .
Photo: David McNew (Getty)
https://gizmodo.com/san-francisco-becomes-first-u-s-city-to-ban-face-recog-1834762996
Barry Friedman , director of the Policing Project at New York University School of Law and appendage of Axon ’s value-system board , said in a statement that “ very material care ” about preconception in grimace recognition technology make it too risky to integrate into law torso cameras .
“ At present , there are very material concerns about the truth of font realization , and especially about diagonal in the way it identify people along racial , ethnic and gender lines , ” Friedman say . “ Until we address and mitigate these challenges , we can not risk incorporating side recognition engineering into policing . The ethics board acclaim Axon for act consistently with this . ”
In a statement email to Gizmodo , Axon said “ we , as a company , agree with ” the value-system board ’s conclusion that confront acknowledgment technology should be excluded from Axon body cameras .
“ Current human face matching technology raises serious ethical concerns . In addition , there are also technological limitations to using this technology on body cameras , ” Axon articulate . “ uniform with the Board ’s recommendation , Axon will not be market face matching products on our body camera at this time . ”
The current ban was firstreportedby the New York Times .
Last month , San Francisco became the first American city toban government - run face recognition surveillance . Nearby Oakland appearspoisedto do the same , and jurisdictions around the United States are at varying states of canvas similar idea . In New York , for illustration , a proposal wouldbanlandlords from using face identification surveillance on tenants . California isconsideringa state - wide ban on face recognition in law torso Cam .
There is adeepening wellof enquiry underlining the fundamental problems of fount acknowledgment surveillance technology . As Gizmodo previously report :
The majority of American adults are in police facial recognition database , according to a Georgetown Lawstudy . An MITstudyfound that Rekognition , Amazon ’s popular facial recognition Cartesian product , struggles to describe the face of women and citizenry of gloss . Astudyby the ACLU in 2018 found Amazon Rekognition incorrectly matched 28 members of Congress to mugshot photograph , and that results disproportionately negatively impacted multitude of people of colour .
The Axon ethics board , which was staffed by the Policing Project at the request of Axon itself , argue in its42 - Sir Frederick Handley Page reportthat in actual - domain conditions — the kind of unmanageable - to - predict action a constabulary officer faces daily—“face recognition technology performs quite ill — both in terms of put on negative and false positives . ”
The table also aim to the disparity in functioning between white mass compared to people of color , and men compared to women , due in part to unrepresentative education data that reinforces decade and more of diagonal .
Last year , Axon ground an ethical code board focused on artificial intelligence and policing applied science . Almost in a flash , the increasing use of Axon ’s body cameras as surveillance tools became the first item of focus .
Among the set of six finish as detailed in theirreport , the display board itself said that AI ethics committees are not nearly as important as government regulation of AI surveillance technologies — regulation that is for the most part presently absent . The write up read :
“ We also are strong believers in the need for government regulations of typeface credit . Although we acclaim Axon ’s constraint and dedication to ethics through the creation and exercise of this Board , we know that we do not have all the answers and are not representative of all the community in which face realization might finally be deploy . We can not bank on private companies to mold themselves entirely , although we certainly can hold them to high ethical standard . To that ending , we call upon governments — federal , state , or local — to step in and fill up this regulatory gap , as some have already begun to do . ”
In 2018 , Microsoft President Brad Smithcalled for federal regulationof nerve credit , and the company gain ground accolades in the public press in April forpublicizing its decisionto not provide face realisation technology to a California law enforcement agency .
“ We hold out in a res publica of Torah , and the government necessitate to play an important role in regularize facial recognition applied science , ” Smith wrote . “ As a oecumenical principle , it seems more sensible to ask an elected government to regulate companies than to ask unelected companies to regularise such a regime . ”
Although Axon will refrain from using face recognition applied science in its body cameras for now , it left start the theory of adopting it at a tardy date . The company said in its financial statement that it believes “ face matching applied science merit further research to well understand and solve for the key number identify in the theme , including evaluating way to de - prejudice algorithmic program as the board urge . ” Axon ’s ethics board expect to revisit the issue “ sporadically ” as the technology interchange .
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