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IBM Gets Out of Facial Recognition Business, Calls On Congress To Advanced Policies Tackling Racial Injustice (cnbc.com) 70

Posted by BeauHD from the abrupt-halt dept.
IBM CEO Arvind Krishna called on Congress Monday to enact reforms to advance racial justice and combat systemic racism while announcing the company was getting out of the facial recognition business. CNBC reports: "IBM firmly opposes and will not condone uses of any technology, including facial recognition technology offered by other vendors, for mass surveillance, racial profiling, violations of basic human rights and freedoms, or any purpose which is not consistent with our values and Principles of Trust and Transparency," Krishna wrote in the letter delivered to members of Congress late Monday. "We believe now is the time to begin a national dialogue on whether and how facial recognition technology should be employed by domestic law enforcement agencies."

IBM decided to shut down its facial recognition products and announce its decision as the death of George Floyd brought the topic of police reform and racial inequity into the forefront of the national conversation, a person familiar with the situation told CNBC. IBM's facial recognition business did not generate significant revenue for the company, the person familiar with the situation said, but the decision remains notable for a technology giant that counts the U.S. government as a major customer. The decision was both a business and an ethical one, the person familiar with the situation said. The company heard in the past few weeks concerns from many constituencies, including employees, about its use of the technology, the person added.

"Artificial Intelligence is a powerful tool that can help law enforcement keep citizens safe. But vendors and users of Al systems have a shared responsibility to ensure that Al is tested for bias, particularly when used in law enforcement, and that such bias testing is audited and reported," Krishna wrote. The letter was addressed to sponsors and co-sponsors of a sweeping police reform bill unveiled by Democrats Monday -- Black Caucus Chair Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA), House Judiciary Committee Chair Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), Sen. Corey Booker (D-NJ), Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY).
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IBM Gets Out of Facial Recognition Business, Calls On Congress To Advanced Policies Tackling Racial Injustice More

IBM Gets Out of Facial Recognition Business, Calls On Congress To Advanced Policies Tackling Racial Injustice

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  • Remove any reference to race (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2020 @12:45AM (#60162550) Homepage

    The letter from IBM actually contains a lot of solid suggestions. Nothing surprising, but good stuff. However, none of it should have anything to do with race:

    - Hold police accountable for misconduct.

    - Don't do mass surveillance.

    - Encourage more vocational education, and start that educational track early.

    All good stuff, all necessary. But tying these suggestions to race is just political pandering.

    • Also, you don't need facial recognition to do racial profiling; you only need this [imgur.com]

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Race is what is driving these changes right now. Race is important to consider. Even though it shouldn't matter the fact is that today it does matter, and it will matter for decades to come, and just pretending it doesn't won't fix these problems.

      I know you mean well but think about it: pressuring people not to mention race is kinda like newspeak isn't it? If you dare not mention something it's impossible to discuss it, impossible to address the problems.

      • Re:Remove any reference to race (Score:5, Insightful)

        by DrMrLordX ( 559371 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2020 @04:52AM (#60162868)

        Race isn't driving anything. There's an overarching desire to remake the United States into something else, for better or for worse. One dead man is just another excuse to get the ball rolling.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          It wasn't one dead man and it's not an excuse, it's the reason.

          • POTUS disagrees. It's like the old saying: A few bad apples... are perfectly fine when it comes to police, and do not in any way spoil the bunch.

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              It's interesting how when a few bad actors turn up to unorganized group of people protesting it reflects on all of them and it's their fault for not stopping it.

              When the highly structured and organized police department discovered a few bad cops they are just bad apples and they couldn't have known about them from the numerous complaints filed previously.

          • Nonsense. It isn't the "reason" when you realize that nobody seems to care much that it was a problem local to Minneapolis. Or that the perp may have known the victim personally prior to the killing. Hmmmmm

            It doesn't pass the sniff test. You can't conclusively show that the killing had anything to do with race (per se) or that OTHER police departments have the exact same problem. People may FEEL like it's reminiscent of things going on in their own community, and that's always enough to get some protes

        • "The rotten apple spoils his companion." -- Ben Franklin

          You may find that the country we're demanding is the country we were promised!

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
          Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • Go ahead and take a look this website real fast: http://heyjackass.com/ [heyjackass.com] I'll wait.

            Now look at the American carnage on that page. Look at the only number in single digits. That's what you SJWs have identified as the problem? If black lives actually mattered, you'd be protecting them from their greatest killers: other black people.

          • Some departments need reform and some don't. Can you tell the difference?

        • Hmmmm, business isn't doing well, what can we salvage? Sour grapes, check. A little corporate virtue signaling, check. You can bet that you wouldn't hear this from them if that business was doing well for the company.

      • Race is what is driving these changes right now. Race is important to consider.

        I agree. Machine learning will serve to entrench existing biases [aiforanyone.org], so race is very important to consider as we adopt new technologies.

    • But isnt the tech crowd also pushing mass surveillance as a tool to detect covid19?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      Sure, except that there's a diparity in the way races are treated. Should we ignore that?

      Is it equal protection to treat police misconduct in a color-blind manner when that misconduct itself is *not* colorbind?

    • The ringleaders phones were recorded. From this we get IMEI numbers, then who owns the phone. Give that info to credit agencies, banks - make it hard for em. Just before the election, strike them off the ballot list. Tip off health insurance funds. Not a shred of racism in doing the above, But if one minority was overrepresented, too bad. Who needs face recognition, when all the perps are packing phones beaconing disobediance. Anyone not with Donny, gets fired.

  • No, it's the masks (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Shompol ( 1690084 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2020 @12:58AM (#60162568)
    Wide use of masks made face recognition inoperable. IBM got out of the development of what is not going to be a viable product in the near future, perhaps ever. Expressing privacy concerns along the way is just the icing.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Xenx ( 2211586 )
      Mask are a stumbling block that they would want the AI to work past, regardless of the current situation. Plenty of companies are still working on it. The current situation only increased the need for AI recognition through masks.

      There is likely more to the story than purely wanting to support BLM or anti-surveillance. But, likely after weighing the R&D costs along with public opinion right now it likely made sense financially. That doesn't mean I think the people running IBM have no conscience, only t

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by sycodon ( 149926 )

        Yep.

        This was a business decision with a perceived benefit of scoring some SJW points with the malcontents.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Xenx ( 2211586 )
          Use of the term SJW, whether you intend it or not, implies that the protesters don't have a legitimate reason to be out there. I'm not condoning everything being done, but I do agree with the reason why it's being done. As to IBM, it's easier to do the right thing when it's popular. I wish businesses would do more than token gestures when things are popular.
    • It seems to me that facial recognition *could* work in principle even for someone wearing a mask, since it is based on certain shape measurements that cannot be hidden by covering part of your face. OTOH, it is much harder for us puny humans to recognize a masked face. So masks could actually make facial recognition tech *more* useful, not less.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        What you need is a mask with a photo of another face on it, or some random extra eyes and mouths etc. Rather than trying to hide your face just add too much noise and bad data to the system for it to work.

        Masks also seem like a good place to attach some high brightness IR LEDs to help blind cameras.

        • Yup, also making you the first one to be plucked out of the crowd, beaten to (and then on) the ground and then - if you survive - being hauled before the judge on some vague but nevertheless scary charges.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Chinese companies have been demonstrating facial recognition that works with masks for years.

  • Translation (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kyogreex ( 2700775 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2020 @01:23AM (#60162592)

    IBM's facial recognition business did not generate significant revenue for the company

    IBM can't compete in this market, so they're trying to soften any market impact by making this about how virtuous they are.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by majorme ( 515104 )
      That's, indeed, the most likely translation

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by fred911 ( 83970 )

      ''making this about how virtuous they are.''

      Not even close. They facilitated indexing of census data for the Nazis directly aiding genocide.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      Ya, as soon as I see them come out against screwing older workers and change their policies about that, then I'll believe their other pronouncements are not mere grandstanding.

    • The ones pushing this technology are doing it mostly for their own use. Google and Facebook have amassed large amounts of images they can monetize, so facial recognition is good business for them even if they don't sell the technology.
      Microsoft collects other data, but still has a lot of uses for AI to sift through all the keystrokes that Win 10 collects in addition to all the corporate e-mails stored on Azure.
      IBM missed the data collection bandwagon, and they depend entirely on sales of the tech to justify

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Kjella ( 173770 )

        Yeah, there's a difference between decent and excellent facial recognition but that's not where the money is. There's mainly three markets:

        1) Face verification like FaceID, Windows Hello etc. which is a mostly solved problem. At least adequately well enough solved that anyone that interested in getting your data would pick a different method rather than creating an advanced 3D printed face mask.
        2) "Kind" face recognition like spotting your friends and family members in photos you upload. Can be trivially do

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      I should think IBM could compete, particularly on the big data parts of facial recognition and tracking. It's only a matter of time before it's possible to track everyone in every public space by cameras and facial recognition. The actual facial recognition part isn't going to be the hard part, it's putting everything together and managing the data.

      Companies like IBM don't grow by staying strictly in their traditional silos -- otherwise IBM would be where Control Data Corporation is today. The companies

  • It's there in Black and White [so to speak] : It wasn't make enough money for them.

  • Yet another area where the all mighty Watson quietly tries to leave the scene....
    Watson would solve all problems for humanity while bringing world peace.
    Or at least that is what my IBM salesperson told me....

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2020 @06:10AM (#60162966)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • If combined with eye-witness testimony, it could be a powerful tool to make sure the right people get arrested.

      I was thinking the same thing. Facial recognition could--after significant development--help to reduce cases where someone is harassed by the police simply for being black or Mexican.

      But sadly it has no bearing on the recent tragedy, where the victim actually had committed a crime and was still at the crime scene when arrested, brutalized, and murdered. IBM's announcement seems like mere pandering.

  • Call me cynical but... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by erp_consultant ( 2614861 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2020 @07:00AM (#60163032)

    Is it just a coincidence that IBM has suddenly grown a conscience? Or is it more to do with them losing money on facial recognition? It just seems very convenient that they are shutting the project down while at the same time trying to score some points with the WOKE crowd. This shouldn't surprise me as this is the way of the world these days. Empty rhetoric is the new currency. It costs nothing to produce and seems to yield endless dividends in the public eye.

    Keep in mind this is the same company that has laid off tens of thousands of employees over the past few years without as much as a blink of the corporate eye. Now this guy might prove me wrong but, as always, I watch what people do not what they say.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      IBM is a global corporation (I for International) that profits from the disparity in labor pools around the globe. They're exploiting all nations for their own gain. And now they have the gull to engage in virtue signaling?

      What value does IBM bring to the table that couldn't be ran more efficiently at the local level with better results?

  • And the statistics arenâ(TM)t biased, they just return results that are unpopular. Facts and the truth donâ(TM)t care about your opinion
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • From a corporation not known for its ethics; after all, even IBMers used to joke that it meant "I've Been Misled".

    What happened to George Floyd - and many others before him - was totally inacceptable. I hope & expect elected representatives and other legitimate stakeholders to do what's right, at last.

    I don't expect IBM to use this tragedy as "blackwashing & virtue signalling" to disguise the termination of an under-performing business activity. How about stopping the massive offshoring of jobs,

    • From a corporation not known for its ethics; after all, even IBMers used to joke that it meant "I've Been Misled".

      I don't think that was a nickname anybody used, Ivan.

      Maybe somebody made it up? And that you attribute it to insiders is telling; they've always been a really popular place to work. You story isn't even believable.

  • I'm not sure any company that assisted the Nazis in perpetrating the holocaust should ever be allowed to participate in any public surveillance or law enforcement systems, ever.

    Some things should be permanently disqualifying.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    I salute IBM for at least giving some lip service to getting out of that dirty business, but I never fully trust anyone who's last name is "Incorporated",

  • What systemic racism?
  • Do they mean racial injustice like college admissions, grades, job hiring, and promotion quotas?

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