That's not really for you to decide, is it? You're absolutely free to have that opinion of course.
>We should not respect those who lend it their time and effort.
Also your choice of course. Facial recognition is essentially a light integration of powerful underlying technologies. Should 'we' ostracize those working on machine learning, computer vision, network and distributed computing, etc?
I'm much more worried about people using your arguments to try and shut down the discussion than people trying to open the debate, because once the mass surveillance/face recognition mass adoption pandora's box is open there won't be any way to go back.
When I see predator drones and FBI stingray planes above every major us cities during protests I already know we're not going in the "let's talk about this before reaching the point no return" direction.
Can you provide evidence for this ? Not that I doubt it, but if I want to tell other people that story, I must have evidence to be believed :-)
edit: ah of course, 30 seconds of duckduckgo just provide the info I need : https://thehill.com/homenews/house/501445-democrats-press-dh...
https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/surveillance-te...
https://www.wired.com/2016/01/california-police-used-stingra...
https://chicago.cbslocal.com/2014/12/06/activists-say-chicag...
Once the tech is out there it's simply a question of "when" will it be used for borderline illegal activities, especially in the US where you have these different entities (fbi, cia, nsa, dea, &c.) basically acting in their own bubble and doing whatever they want until it's leaked and/or gets outrageous enough to get the public attention.
I mean, there were unidentified armed forces marching in US streets last week, if people don't se this as the biggest red flag in recent US history I don't know what they need.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/akzvy8/unidentified-law-e...
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/i-was-horrified...
I can't think of other uses and I'd be interested if you can come up with some.
The current service we use, while accurate, costs 50 cents per verification...
Edit: reading through this thread, if the model isn't super massive, we could offer on-browser verification! 27MB is still a hefty download though.
Arguably this is a front for mass surveillance, or can easily be misused for that, but the ostensible purpose is separate and benign.
[i] https://www.pyimagesearch.com/2020/05/11/an-ethical-applicat...
1) assistance to recognizing people (because low vision, because memory fails, because you have a lot of photos...)
2) ensure candidate X is actually candidate X and not a paid person to take the exam in name of candidate X
3) door access control (to replace/in addition to access card)
4) having your own X-Ray (like in Amazon Prime): identify an actor/actress/model
5) having your personal robot addressing you by name
Compared to using API in the cloud or purchasing Hikvision cameras.
Can you imagine the bureaucratic nightmare that would be unleashed upon yourself if "the system" decides you aren't who you say you are because of the way you aged, an injury, surgery or a few new freckles?
This already happens sometimes with birth certificates and identity theft, and it's awful for those who have to experience it. I'd hate to have a black box AI inflicting that upon others for inexplicable reasons.
Couldn't you argue the same way against just about any kind of IED or booby trap? Yet people tend to ostracize those who make them more than they do people who make ball bearings and nails.