Now everyone and their mom are building smart glasses, including Facebook. Still, BuzzFeed News report notes that apparently, Facebook is thinking of incorporating facial recognition into its next pair of RA glasses. Um, no, thank you.
At an internal meeting, Andrew Bosworth, Facebook’s vice president of augmented reality and virtual reality, said the social media giant was considering whether it had the legal capacity to include facial recognition features in its RA glasses. According to Buzzfeed, Bosworth said facial recognition “could be the most thorny issue, where the benefits are so clear and the risks are so clear and we don’t know where to balance things.” His comment answered an employee’s question about whether this technology had the potential to “damage the real world,” specifically to achieve. As for possible benefits, Bosworth pointed to the secret search for the name of an acquaintance if he had forgotten it or was blind.
There is a lot to unpack here. For starters, it’s not encouraging that the comments seem to focus on the legality of whether facial recognition should be included in these smart RA glasses, rather than the ethical implications. The famous incident in which they were a pair of Google Glass he ripped off a woman’s face in a bar sparked a national conversation about the privacy implications of smart glasses, and these no have facial recognition. Facial recognition, even if used for “benign” reasons, presents a much greater ethical dilemma.
It is unclear, for example, whether anyone could choose not to be included in the database that Facebook would use to enable this feature. It would be pretty hateful if you were walking outside and not realizing you were passing by, that you could learn your name and potentially access your Facebook profile from a 2 second encounter. Consent should be at the forefront of any facial recognition technology, so it’s annoying that BuzzFeed reported that Bosworth was critical of Illinois. Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), which requires all companies that collect biometric data to obtain consent before doing so. In January, Facebook was ordered to pay one $ 650 million settlement in a class action lawsuit from Illinois alleging that the company violated BIPA by collecting facial recognition data without consent.
G / O Media may receive a commission
With all this in mind, it’s baffling that Facebook is even considering including the technology on a device that already has a history of disturbing people. That said, it’s not a fact that Facebook is finally including facial recognition in its smart glasses. In a tweet following the BuzzFeed report, Bosworth acknowledged that facial recognition is “a very controversial issue” and that the company would hold a “very public debate about the pros and cons.” He also stressed that Facebook’s smart glasses “would be fine without [facial recognition] but there were some pleasant use cases if it could be done in a way that the public and regulators were comfortable with. ”
The last part is the crux of the problem here. Facial recognition is still a hotly debated technology and by no means is there a social consensus on how to use it. Earlier this month, Minneapolis banned police of the use of facial recognition technology and in November, the The Los Angeles police department did the same. In total, 13 cities across the U.S. they have banned local law enforcement from using the technology. Several cities, included San Francisco i Boston, have also banned the use of facial recognition by the government. And even if people and lawmakers miraculously embraced the technology before Facebook’s anticipated launch of these smart glasses later this year, Facebook of all companies doesn’t have the best track record. privacy.
Simply put, society is barely warming up with the idea of wearing extremely simple smart glasses on his face, let alone a pair with facial recognition. Devices like these have has failed before, i it will probably fail again, because no company has so far successfully convinced consumers that this is a gadget they absolutely make need. If Facebook wants to do it the right way, it will release a pair of smart glasses that will solve consumer problems, not a pair that will immediately knock down an entire barrel of worms.