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Comment by ausbah | Hacker News Reader

>“People were stealing our Häagen-Dazs. It was a big problem,” he said. He described Clearview as a “good system” that helped security personnel identify problem shoppers.

>BuzzFeed News has reported that two other entities, a labor union and a real estate firm, also ran trials with a surveillance system developed by Clearview to flag individuals they deemed risky. The publication also reported that Clearview’s software has been used by Best Buy, Macy’s, Kohl’s, the National Basketball Association and numerous other organizations.

this seems just like another tool that will be used to put the non-elite at a disadvantage. until proven otherwise - I can only think of negative outcomes for ex-felons, low wage workers, people of color, and the likes coming from the usage of this app by the rich and large corporations

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> this seems just like another tool that will be used to put the non-elite at a disadvantage. until proven otherwise - I can only think of negative outcomes for ex-felons, low wage workers, people of color, and the likes coming from the usage of this app by the rich and large corporations

You lack imagination. This will be used by HR, attorneys, private investigators and others for all sorts of purposes.

- Were you really out sick? According to our partners at Foo Corporation, you were eating a churro in front of a movie theater at 10:45AM on the day you were out.

- Why were you talking to <x> in the parking lot after work?

- Our security provider identified you in a social gathering with 3 other employees, or engaged in a PDA with a fellow employee. You are out of compliance with our fraternization policy and are terminated.

- You get a 30 minute meal break. Why were you leaving the men's room at 12:45?

- You were arrested for shoplifting in 1993, we are refusing entry to <x> stadium.

- Your grades have declined, and you have been seen entering your dorm after 2AM 40% of the time, scholarship revoked.

If anything, this will bring the routine harassment that individuals in authority inflict on people and elevate it to a centrally controlled, legal practice.

> If anything, this will bring the routine harassment that individuals in authority inflict on people and elevate it to a centrally controlled, legal practice.

For those organizations that can afford what I am sure is an exorbitant subscription fee, maybe.

Wait until insurance demands its use to mitigate risk.

That's already here for auto insurance.

"Some of the factors used to calculate your discount at American Family Insurance include vehicle usage (how often you drive), braking (how smoothly or abruptly you apply the brakes when stopping), and acceleration (how quickly or smoothly you accelerate after stopping). Speed and time of day are also factored in, among other driving behaviors."[1]

[1] https://www.amfam.com/resources/articles/understanding-insur...

And that, right there, is one of the most stupid uses of data based on bad assumptions.

One of the keys to high performance driving, whether for racing or emergency driving, is the ability to get the absolute maximum out of the available traction -- that is exactly how you stop shorter, turn quicker, etc. -- which is exactly what is needed in tight situations.

That said, most driving moves should be done using the minimum of tire usage for efficiency, smoothness, predictability on the road, etc.. But occasionally achieving max Gs for specific situations -- and without exceeding the available grip and falling into sliding -- is the likely mark of a highly skilled driver.

Unless they're also looking for and counting primarily loss of traction events (overbraking/overturning), their conclusions are likely wrong.

Just like the use of BMI as a health index, which will classify a weightlifter with a ripped 5% body fat as "Obese", this will similarly misclassify drivers, and in this case, it will unjustly overcharge them.

Stupid

Some insurers may build risk models around that. But remember that insurers deal with the public at large, and the "average punter" is a blithering idiot.

Lol. This is a near commodity tech. Heck I built a Rube Goldberg version of this to identify when the UPS guy comes, and I’m a 0.10x developer.

There’s already multiple shady companies that share fixed and mobile LPR. The social media integration isn’t required for this tech — it’s distracting hype.

0.10X developer. I should get business cards printed with this.

> negative outcomes for... people of color

Wouldn’t it do the opposite? Instead of racial profiling it’s using a system that pulls from social media. I wouldn’t say it’s a good system but it seems less biased.

EDIT: OP said “negative outcomes” and not “unfair towards”. Yeah I guess something can be more fair but still have disproportionate outcomes.

> Wouldn’t it do the opposite? Instead of racial profiling it’s using a system that pulls from social media.

Oh there'll still be plenty racial profiling because the trained models will likely inherit these biases. Instead of a store clerk following me around, it'll be an automated system that just flags me as "high risk" and who knows what other secret feedback looks that results in.

I wish our leaders were smart enough to legally require that such services _must_ publish their accuracies and be open source.

A system like this as a for-profit business will go about as well as for-profit prisons have gone in the US.. except more subtle and sinister

Right, and then the discrimination is AI-washed - security personnel can say they're just following people flagged as "high risk" around the store, not discriminating, even though the "AI" mostly used skin color to add the high risk flag in the first place.

Discrimination: SOLVED!

>trained models will likely inherit these biases.

Living in middle America, I can tell you that Joe Average absolutely does not understand this. To him, based on my conversations with the people around me, AI/ML/anything sufficiently 'futuristic' sounding is without bias. To them, these models are developed in a vacuum, and using the AI label implies that the end result actually built itself, like a baby human would grow up.

And this scares me.

It does develop an idea in a vacuum. It finds the bias and uses the best biases to explain the world.

Facial recognition along with just cameras in general have historically struggled with the faces of non-caucasian individuals. This typically results from biases in training sets and in many cases cameras simply creating images with far more contrast for lighter skin tones.

It seems more likely a function of actual contrast in the real World than a function of bias (inadvertent or otherwise)?

I imagine it's down to skin tone, or do facial recognition systems really recognise dark skinned "Caucasians" better than light-skinned non-Caucasians.

Exactly: In the extreme, perfectly black objects have no visible contrast whatsoever as demonstrated by Vantablack.

https://www.wired.com/story/vantablack-anish-kapoor-stuart-s...

> faces of non-caucasian individuals

The Chinese government, operating the biggest surveillance state on the planet, have had no trouble with the faces of non-caucasian individuals, historically or otherwise. Their facial recognition systems are highly adept at identifying asian faces. They also supply half the world.

According to IHS Markit, China accounted for nearly half of the global facial recognition business in 2018.

https://www.ft.com/content/6f1a8f48-1813-11ea-9ee4-11f260415...

The real issue here is not Caucasian skin tones vs everyone else but instead light skin tones vs dark(er) skin tones. So Chinese government won't have an issue with current facial recognition tech.

Relatedly, photography itself developed an early bias against black people in terms of what colors/contrasts they optimized film for photographing:

https://www.vox.com/2015/9/18/9348821/photography-race-bias

That gets me thinking: in some parallel universe history of the Earth where interior lighting and photography was primarily developed by and for people of color, I bet average indoor lighting would be brighter, and Caucasian skin would often be washed out in CCV.

Right, because people of colour love having overly bright lights blasting into their eyes.

Lights aren't set for photography of any skin tone, they're set at a level for comfort and to provide enough light for us to operate.

That’s fair. I was thinking about dimly lit bars.

> ex-felons, low wage workers, people of color, and the likes

"people of color" are not "the likes" of ex-felons and low wage workers.

I think they just meant marginalized groups, not People Who Are Bad.

People who are generally oppressed by the larger system/those in authority? There's a charitable understanding of the statement here.

Groups disadvantaged by the current power structure of society?

In the context of the sentence it's clear that the post refers to "Typically Persecuted People", and I would argue that applies to all three.

sorry that isn't what I meant. I was trying to refer to the systemic biases typically found in this algorithms (correctly identifying lighter skinned people over darker skinned people, algorithms learning to use race as a factor in decision a king, etc.)

Tell that to Bloomberg.

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