Microsoft is advising governments to legislate a rule in the coming year that needs face recognition technology to be separately experimented to avoid unfair prejudice, make sure accuracy, and defend rights of individuals.
In a blog posted on Thursday, Brad Smith, Microsoft chief counsel wrote:
“The facial recognition genie, so to speak, is just emerging from the bottle. Unless we act, we risk waking up five years from now to find that facial recognition services have spread in ways that exacerbate societal issues. By that time, these challenges will be much more difficult to bottle back up.”
Smith supported the results of the review of face recognition by humans rather than believing only the computers.
“This includes where decisions may create a risk of bodily or emotional harm to a consumer, where there may be implications on human or fundamental rights, or where a consumer’s personal freedom or privacy may be impinged,” he wrote.
He further said that people integrating the tech must “recognize that they are not absolved of their obligation to comply with laws prohibiting discrimination against individual consumers or groups of consumers.”
In everyday life, face recognition tech is utilized for works like tagging friends on social media, unlocking phones, however, there are security issues. The creation of cameras and improvements in artificial intelligence have made it even simpler to track and watch the activities of individuals.
Law implementation organizations regularly depend upon technology to assist with inquiries, however, the software doesn’t come without defects. Earlier this year, Metropolitan Police in the UK used software that was reported to give inaccurate results in 98% of the cases.
Microsoft is not the only one announcing fears about the use of technology. In May, the ACLU disclosed that Amazon was retailing Rekognition, its face recognition tech, to law implementation organizations in the US, comprising the Police Department in Orlando. In July, ACLU experiment of Rekognition revealed that the tech incorrectly labeled 28 congressmen as famous criminals.
Smith also warned the government that human rights and democratic freedoms could be influenced by using the technology.
“When combined with ubiquitous cameras and massive computing power and storage in the cloud, a government could use facial recognition technology to enable continuous surveillance of specific individuals,” Smith wrote.
“We must ensure that the year 2024 doesn’t look like a page from the novel 1984.”
