Artificial Intelligence

[horangi]

I'm not sure how the facial scanning at the airport is going to impact much there.  If you are flagged, its not going to matter if they scan your face or not.  Now perhaps the concern is more with the facial recognition everywhere else where one might be considering nefarious viva la resistance activities.  I will say coming back through immigration the last couple trips has been a breeze- we didn't even need our passports, just look at the camera, it gives you a green check, then walk past the CPB person who says welcome back XYZ.

[Phylum of Alexandria]

33 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

This is already the case, just not for people like you.

Yeah, and I don't like it. Why would I want it to be spread to half the country? Especially when tied to face scanning at the airport?

[Kalbear]

12 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

Yeah, and I don't like it. Why would I want it to be spread to half the country? Especially when tied to face scanning at the airport?

It already is for half the country, or more. If you don't like it, you should not like it right now.

[Phylum of Alexandria]

2 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

It already is for half the country, or more. If you don't like it, you should not like it right now.

Please explain.

[Kalbear]

5 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

Please explain.

We are already using facial scanning and a whole lot of other data to block, suspend, or restrict people regularly. We do it for all sorts of stupid-ass shit, like a 7 year old having the same name as a terrorist and being blocked from flying. There are already no actual process rules or rights around this.

The difference, as I said, is that you're now worried about it applying to you. 

[Phylum of Alexandria]

3 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

We are already using facial scanning and a whole lot of other data to block, suspend, or restrict people regularly. We do it for all sorts of stupid-ass shit, like a 7 year old having the same name as a terrorist and being blocked from flying. There are already no actual process rules or rights around this.

The difference, as I said, is that you're now worried about it applying to you. 

Please explain how this currently applies to half of the country. As I said, I don't like this type of surveillance and interference. But surely even you can understand how a broad expansion of something bad is much worse. And how something rife with opportunity for abuse is not as bad as a protocol where abuse is the entire MO.

[Kalbear]

Just now, Phylum of Alexandria said:

Please explain how this currently applies to half of the country.

It doesn't; it applies to ALL the country. 

Just now, Phylum of Alexandria said:

As I said, I don't like this type of surveillance and interference. But surely even you can understand how a broad expansion of something bad is much worse. And how something rife with opportunity for abuse is not as bad as a protocol where abuse is the entire MO.

My point is that abuse is the entire MO already. 

[Phylum of Alexandria]

2 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

My point is that abuse is the entire MO already. 

Disagree. More importantly, I have a hard time believing that you would seriously equate a surveillance state of Trump 2.0 with our current one. You love your cynicism, but come on. Whatever is going on now, it will be much worse under an admin full of Steve Miller wannabes and Christian fascists.

[Kalbear]

6 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

Disagree. More importantly, I have a hard time believing that you would seriously equate a surveillance state of Trump 2.0 with our current one. You love your cynicism, but come on. Whatever is going on now, it will be much worse under an admin full of Steve Miller wannabes and Christian fascists.

I'm sure the abuse will be greater. But the potential for abuse by Trump or anyone else will still be there. You should care about the potential for abuse regardless of who is in control. 

To be clear I'm not equating anything - I'm saying that the problem exists now, not in the future. 

That said it likely doesn't matter that much when laws aren't really important and no one cares about holding powerful people accountable.

[Phylum of Alexandria]

1 minute ago, Kalbear said:

I'm sure the abuse will be greater. But the potential for abuse by Trump or anyone else will still be there. You should care about the potential for abuse regardless of who is in control. 

I do care, thank you very much. I haven't taken to the streets for the cause. I'll give you a mea culpa as long as you give me the list of issues you haven't formally organized for so I can badger you about your lack of resolve.

But regardless of that care, a potential for abuse is worlds apart from intentional systematic abuse. 1 or 2% of people mistreated is terrible, but 50% mistreated would be a whole lot worse.

5 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

That said it likely doesn't matter that much when laws aren't really important and no one cares about holding powerful people accountable.

See, we agree. The US has had many authoritarian undercurrents, and the unregulated surveillance state has proven to be one of the most insidious and robust. But it would still be far worse under a MAGA 2.0 administration.

[Kalbear]

6 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

I do care, thank you very much. I haven't taken to the streets for the cause. I'll give you a mea culpa as long as you give me the list of issues you haven't formally organized for so I can badger you about your lack of resolve.

There aren't any, but please continue. 

And no, I doubt you care at all. I doubt it's a big deal whatsoever until it has a possibility of affecting you. 

6 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

But regardless of that care, a potential for abuse is worlds apart from intentional systematic abuse. 1 or 2% of people mistreated is terrible, but 50% mistreated would be a whole lot worse.

Abuse is abuse. Yeah, it's worse, but you're still okay with that 1-2%. 

6 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

See, we agree. The US has had many authoritarian undercurrents, and the unregulated surveillance state has proven to be one of the most insidious and robust. But it would still be far worse under a MAGA 2.0 administration.

I don't think it would be far worse, at least not for a while. That's the thing about authoritarian systems - they don't tend to prosecute everyone. They barely harass most people. They just make sure that you know that you could, at any time, be harassed. For some reason or no reason.

Which is exactly the state we have right now for a whole lot of folks. 

[Kalbear]

Also, to go back to the actual topic the thing I'm far more worried about is the same thing Israel is being dinged on - that the tools they're using is incredibly failure-prone. That might be okay when you're trying to identify a tree, but it's not great when using it to detain people or to call airstrikes. 

[DMC]

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

There aren't any, but please continue. 

Wait..is this a typo or are you actually saying there are no issues you care about that you haven’t formally organized for?  Cuz the latter seems pretty haughty.

[fionwe1987]

Face scanning is problematic because you show your face a heck of a lot more than your passport, your name or other ID. 

With face scanning at airports, you now have a way to link entry and exit to faces scanned in protests, entering and exiting buildings, etc.

Without the face itself being the ID at airports, you need to do the additional work of connecting those faces swept up during surveillance to a name, then matching that name to the person at the airport.

Not impossible to do, but it's a roadblock to a smooth, centralized way to log all your movements in a single database with a single type of ID.

Add atop this the serious ways face ID can fuck up, and the ways those fuckups are worse for people of color because facial recognition models tend to be heavily weighted in their training data to white people, as do camera color balance algorithms, and you're left with a system that will make life harder for a larger fraction of people.

I really don't understand all the snippy back and forth about this. 

ETA: and this is linked to using AI for war. Drones targeting based on face recognition is already a thing. And as a brown person with a beard, I don't fancy being bombed because some dipshit AI thinks I look like a terrorist.

Edited April 25 by fionwe1987

[Kalbear]

17 hours ago, DMC said:

Wait..is this a typo or are you actually saying there are no issues you care about that you haven’t formally organized for?  Cuz the latter seems pretty haughty.

What can I say, I'm fuckin awesome

[DMC]

3 hours ago, Kalbear said:

What can I say, I'm fuckin awesome

OR, you just don’t actually care about any issues.

[Phylum of Alexandria]

9 minutes ago, DMC said:

OR, you just don’t actually care about any issues.

Bingo!

[Kalbear]

14 minutes ago, DMC said:

OR, you just don’t actually care about any issues.

Shit you're on to me

[horangi]

On 4/24/2024 at 11:00 PM, fionwe1987 said:

Face scanning is problematic because you show your face a heck of a lot more than your passport, your name or other ID. 

With face scanning at airports, you now have a way to link entry and exit to faces scanned in protests, entering and exiting buildings, etc.

Without the face itself being the ID at airports, you need to do the additional work of connecting those faces swept up during surveillance to a name, then matching that name to the person at the airport.

I think its mostly a fait accompli now though.  Not sure if you are from the US or not, but drivers licenses/IDs need to be 'RealID' compliant by next year which allows for facial biometric identification. In time it wont really matter if you have been staying off the grid, your face will be your ID (as mine apparently is now using Global Entry and by giving up my rights to privacy from the government by being a Fed).  You don't really even need to link up a birth certificate or social security number, etc with it, if you've gotten on the wrong side of the law, there's nothing preventing the state from prosecuting John/Jane Doe with facial ID # xyz. Add to the fact that virtually everyone already keeps a personal tracking device on them nearly all the time (no insidious tracker chips needed) and I'd guess the age of anonymity is at an end.  Given the way we've seen the youngest generation act towards social media, my guess is that in a hundred years, no one will blink an eye about it.

Edited April 27 by horangi