I love this quote at the end of the the google cached result - "we should not throw away the oven because the temperature could be set wrong and burn the pizza."
Seems like more productive conversation could be had over how to use, than blanket dismissals. The proverbial 400-lbs man in his basement can code this up relatively easily with existing tools, to near state-of-the-art results. So the guy that works for the FBI will too. Let's come up with appropriate, targeted safety mechanisms so the oven doesn't light the whole building on fire.
As long as the results are not taken as judgements, but only auxiliary tool, it would not be a concern.
The article indeed argues that any positive match should be vetted by a human.
I have said before and I will say again: after the disaster that was the Amazon Fire Phone I have zero trust in any Amazon.com employee to pick up that any time phone to sound the alarm or if they do, I don't expect Amazon to "do the right thing". The reason I mention this is because I don't think this PhD fellow speaks for the the sales "engineers" at Amazon.com. The sales people will say what they have to say to make a sale.
Lets face it: we programmers just work at a company, the business actually runs the show. I have zero confidence that the customer will understand that "any positive match should be vetted by a human". What does vetting mean anyway?
No police has ever stopped me for matching the profile of a suspect, ever. However, I know people who say it happens (or at least used to happen) to them at least twice a year.
Is a blanket ban on law enforcement from using facial recognition possible? Or at least restrict it to federal agencies (a ban on all law enforcement that is not a federal agency)?
Or, don't use the oven on setting 3 because if you do your house will burn down?