If there is a ban, it should be country law, not just one company. How is this gonna achieve anything if another company goes ahead anyways?
If I ever find myself saying “if I don’t do this, somebody else will”, I don’t do the thing. It’s a good indicator that the thing in question is the wrong thing to do.
Other people will still do it. That’s true. There will always be evil people in this world. But it won’t be me. And that’s important.
In capitalism system everything is equated to money: ethics, success, self-worth.
To be exact, it is tied to short term earnings.
Let's say we're talking about the clickbait/trolling problem in political discourse. We can berate some prominent individual, but that individual is inevitable. If she wasn't doing the clickbait, someone else would be and we'd be beratying them.
Focusing on the individual when a problem is systemic can be empty, righteous moralising.
Ethics, to me, have a place there, and it would be better in all cases to establish those rules or norms in your society, or your culture, rather than regressive actions like banning something.
For any actor, their choice to do or not do something matters. It might not matter much, but it has some impact. I would not describe Amazon as a small player or having a small impact. Dismissing the importance of what they choose seems myopic. To return to your frame, I'd say that if Amazon stuck to its decision not to work on the technology it would be more meaningful than any national ban outside of, probably, the US or China.
In general - it seems like, if we don't like something, we should celebrate it not being done. Even if it's not done in some limited context. In fact, outside of a world government with effective law enforcement - all choices not to do things are limited. So it's really all we have!
The difference between "we should abstain from our moral values because everyone dies anyway in the end" and "we should find ways to pursue our moral values effectively" is substantial. You don't have to be nihilistic to not accept cheap signaling being sold as a solution to real problems.
Few corporations deciding to not do dirty work, just providing their lower-level cloud resources to thousands of smaller firms who will gladly compete for any kind of money -- that does not solve anything.
Stuff like GDPR can change at least something.
Amazon making a pledge not to work on facial recognition does not seem like cheap signaling to me! Cheap signaling would be Google's "AI Ethics Board" staffed with people unlikely to make trouble while Google continues to work on AI. A pledge not to work on technology is an expensive signal!
Ideally, sure, to stop something everyone agrees not to do it. But history is stuffed full of examples where one company could have made a difference. Imagine if IBM refused to work with the Nazis or if Dow Chemical refused to sell agent orange to the US.
It is impossible to solve anything "forever." Facial recognition will be developed, but how long that takes and how well the world can grapple with the consequences matters!
Now there is competitors. Alibaba Cloud and Tencent Cloud will gladly help anyone with facial recognition . See how evil America refuse to help you with your needs? We will because we care about your needs, China will support you.
There were other tabulating machines (for example the Bull[1]) and of course there were (and are) other deforesting agents. The governments in both cases would have found another supplier.
It also would have made a difference! There's a reason the Nazis picked IBM and the US picked Dow.
If it's the case that Amazon could do better work than Tencent and Alibaba - then their abstention is laudable. If it's the case that Amazon is inferior, then they'd get out-competed in a winner-take-all marketplace so they both save money and have clean hands. So win-win.
[1] http://www.feb-patrimoine.com/projet/bull_t30/tabu_t30.htm
That can be enough to reduce the cost/benefit ratio far enough that your potential customer does not consider it worth it anymore. If it does not, the next best option also has the option to refuse, and so on. Even if the immoral act eventually gets done, you have harmed the immoral actor, thus reducing their ability to act in the future -- and it's likely that you wouldn't approve of their future actions either.
If it’s not in the Law, it's just corporate marketing
If you don't want to involve regulations resulting in people dying, we can look at regulating interior decorating, or hair braiding, neither of which was conducted in the public interest. Can you name the last 2000 regulations that have been enacted in the us? Can you be sure all of them were in the public interest?
Option B: Corporate entity self-regulates in favor of profit. consumer is screwed.
Corporations regulate not for public interest, but for profit, sometimes it happens that those two are aligned - but that is an exception - not a norm.
The idea of outsourcing your company's ethics to the government seems very shortsighted to me. Facial recognition may never be banned, yet privacy tech could become a strong factor in where developers want to work. Consequently Amazon are right to consider this sort of thing long before the government steps in.
So if Amazon plays unethically, and plays well, and you are competing, you are going to be seriously hampered by not playing along too. And you will have a hard time justifying it to your shareholders or potential investors. Amazon couldn't even win this argument and the game's just starting.
I think ethical companies like the kinds of regulations that keep the playing field level and make ethical transgressions illegal. It gives them a strong support to make their ethical stand.
Look at all of the information that's being gathered today with no respect for the individual's privacy. I'm old enough that this is outrageous, and I really can't believe that people are standing for it. Yet it seems that every new app builder has to enter the market with a data-collecting free offering. If this were illegal, then they could compete on quality and price.
One thing I've learned as I've gone through some things is that if you're the only one in the game who's playing by the rules, you're going to lose.
Corporations don't like to watch their competitors profit from things they are not allowed to do themselves.
That opens up the possibility of benevolent actors filling the void. Or, someone at least as bad but better at playing the government.