Clearview AI shows government needs to be agile in making tech regulation: experts
Privacy and tech experts say that governments must be agile in creating laws to protect their citizens from ethically dubious applications of artificial intelligence (AI).
On January 18, The New York Times reported that a company called Clearview AI is working with hundreds of law enforcement agencies in the U.S., including the F.B.I.
The company allows users to take a picture of a person, and if the photo matches a face in its three billion image database, it can potentially provide information like names, addresses and other details.
The three billion photos are harvested from Facebook, Venmo, YouTube, and other sites.
Ann Cavoukian, former information and privacy commissioner of Ontario, said in an interview that none of the images that were harvested were obtained with the consent of users and “law enforcement should know better.”
...“We should have started years ago, we haven’t; so fine, let’s start now,” she said, adding that other jurisdictions in the U.S., like San Francisco and Oakland, Calif. have banned the use of facial recognition by law enforcement.
“AI right now is just snake oil, and everyone is jumping on the bandwagon,” she said. “There’s been billions of dollars poured into AI, so many startups that say ‘this is powered by AI’ but we haven’t necessarily seen the great… breakthrough. The power isn’t necessarily artificial intelligence, but that it is still built upon the infrastructure of a decade or more of data collection by other companies.”
See the full story here: https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/clearview-ai-shows-government-needs-to-be-agile-in-making-tech-regulation-experts-203136296.html