Everyone and their mother would now build a pair of smart glasses, including Facebook. However, a BuzzFeed News report finds that Facebook is apparently thinking of building facial recognition in its upcoming pair of AR glasses. No, thanks.
In an internal meeting, Andrew Bosworth, Facebook’s vice president for augmented and virtual reality, said the social media giant was wondering if it had the legal capacity to include facial recognition features in AR glasses. According to Buzzfeed, Bosworth said that 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 was in response to an employee’s question about whether such technology has the potential for “real-world harm” by specifically tracking. As for the potential benefits, Bosworth showed the secret search for the name of an acquaintance if you forgot it or have a face blindness.
There is a lot to unpack here. For starters, it’s not encouraging that the comments seem to focus on legality if facial recognition should be included on these AR smart glasses, rather than on the ethical implications. The infamous incident involving a pair of Google Glass he snatched a woman’s face from a bar sparked a national conversation about the privacy implications of smart glasses – and those not they have facial recognition. Facial recognition, even if you use it for “benign” reasons, presents a much greater ethical dilemma.
It is not clear, for example, whether someone could give up his face, being included in any database that Facebook would use to activate this feature. It would be quite attractive if you walked outside and passed without knowing a crawler who could learn your name and access your Facebook profile from a 2-second meeting. Consent should be at the forefront of any facial recognition technology, so it’s annoying that BuzzFeed reported that Bosworth was apparently critical of Illinois. Law on the Confidentiality of Biometric Information (BIPA), which requires all companies that collect biometric data to obtain consent before doing so. In January, Facebook was forced to pay a $ 650 million settlement in a class action lawsuit in Illinois, according to which the company violated BIPA by collecting facial recognition data without consent.
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Given all this, it is surprising that Facebook would even consider including the technology in a device that already has a history of anxious people. That being said, Facebook will ultimately not include facial recognition in its smart glasses. In a tweet following the BuzzFeed report, Bosworth acknowledged that facial recognition is “an extremely controversial topic” and that the company would have a “very public discussion about the pros and cons.” He also stressed that Facebook’s smart glasses “would be fine without [facial recognition] but there have been some nice use cases if it could be done in a way that the public and regulators felt comfortable with. ”
The last part is the essence of the problem here. Facial recognition is still a hotly debated technology and by no means is there a societal consensus on how it should be used. Earlier this month, Minneapolis banned police since the use of facial recognition technology in November, The Los Angeles Police Department did the same. In total, 13 cities In the United States, local law enforcement has banned the use of technology. More cities, inclusive San Francisco and Boston, also banned the government’s use of facial recognition. And even if – and it’s great if – people and lawmakers miraculously adopted the technology before Facebook’s early release of these smart glasses later this year, Facebook of all companies doesn’t have the most privacy experience.
Simply put, the company is barely warming up to the idea of putting extremely simple smart glasses on their faces – not to mention a pair with facial recognition. Devices like these have failed before, and it will probably fail again, because no company has so far successfully convinced consumers that this is a gadget they absolutely have need. If Facebook wants to do this right, it will launch a pair of smart glasses that solve consumer problems – not a pair that immediately hits an entire barrel of worms.