EU bans facial recognition technology: Google agrees, Microsoft protests

The issue of managing facial recognition technology is causing major disagreements among the world’s largest technology companies. While CEO Alphabet and Google, Sundar Pichai, said that a temporary ban like what the EU has proposed recently is necessary, Microsoft’s Chief Legal Officer, Brad Smith, proved dissatisfied. with that intervention.

Pichai said in a conference in Brussels on Monday that governments intervene, make rules to early bind facial recognition technology, and create a legal framework for it. Important to implement. ” This technology can be operational right away, but there should probably be a delay before we can really think of how to use it … Depending on the governments that draw the line.”

But in an interview last week, Smith, Microsoft’s chief legal officer, flatly rejected the idea of ​​a ban.

” Look, you can try to solve the problem with a whole meat cutter or just a small surgical knife,” Smith said when asked about the possibility of the ban. ” And, you know, if you can solve the problem in a way that paves the way for the good to happen and the bad to stop … then that way requires a surgical knife. Young technology.” This will get better. But the only way to continue developing it is actually to let more people use it. “

The two leaders’ comments came as the EU was considering a five-year ban on the use of facial recognition technology in public. The EU bill, which leaked in the newspaper last week and may have changes when it is officially announced, says that a temporary ban would give governments and lawmakers more time. Time to study the dangers of this technology.

Around the world, law enforcement and private companies are using facial recognition to identify people in public places more and more. While proponents insist that technology will help solve crimes, critics say the face detection without careful consideration is a form of disregard for civil liberties and resulting in increased racial discrimination due to the underlying bias in the algorithms.

Face recognition is a key technology used by the Chinese government in many events, and the country also sells its technology to other governments around the world. In the US, facial recognition technology is increasingly being used by police agencies through small contractors. A recent report by the New York Times revealed that a facial recognition system could find 3 billion photos taken from websites like Facebook without user permission, and was used by more than 600 people. local law enforcement.

A Chinese police officer wears glasses that integrate facial recognition technology

Pichai’s comments are particularly notable, because Google itself always denies selling face recognition technology to customers (for fear of being used for misuse or used in surveillance. wide) but no ban has been proposed thus far. In his article in The Financial Times on Monday, Pichai advocated further control of artificial intelligence technology.

” I don’t hesitate to say artificial intelligence needs to be managed,” he wrote. ” Companies like us cannot keep developing a promising new technology and let the market decide how to use it.”

So far, it has been the market that has dictated rules around face recognition, while big tech companies have mixed opinions on that. For example, Microsoft sells face recognition technology, but it has its own limits, such as allowing the police to use the technology in prisons rather than on the street, and not selling it to agencies. Immigration / immigration management. Amazon has always been excited about working with police forces, especially through its Ring video doorbell system – a system criticized by critics to facilitate law enforcement. comes to a huge surveillance network.

At least in the US, a nationwide ban is very unlikely. Some cities in the US, such as San Francisco and Berkley, have banned the technology, but the White House says those measures are an example of how local governments have exceeded their limits. The US government made it clear that it wanted to manage AI – including facial recognition – in the direction of making decision-making rights for itself, as a form of promoting innovative technologies.

Reference: TheVerge