Scan barcode
A review by profpetitfours
Your Face Belongs to Us by Kashmir Hill
5.0
This is an excellent look at the rapidly improving technology around facial recognition. While the book's core follows the growth of Clearview AI, a program used by law enforcement agencies around the US, it makes clear that the technology doesn't just belong to them.
I appreciated the historical approach to the topic. Hill tracks the early days of facial recognition and it's slow and uneven improvements over time.
As Hill highlights in the quote above, those early technology pioneers (probably) could not imagine the use cases that facial recognition has today. For many, it was an academic exercise to prove what was possible. I was constantly drawing connections to emerging AI and LLM tools, a technology we also haven't tried to regulate or discuss the ethics of.
The book also forced me to think of all of the times I've willingly given up my biometric data and what that means about the ability to move around this world unbothered.
I appreciated the historical approach to the topic. Hill tracks the early days of facial recognition and it's slow and uneven improvements over time.
Those giants, computer scientists who had toiled in academic labs and Silicon Valley offices, had paved the way not just for Clearview but for future data-mining companies that may come for our voices, our expressions, our DNA, and our thoughts. They yearned to make computers ever more powerful, without reckoning with the full scope of the consequences. Now we have to live with the results.
As Hill highlights in the quote above, those early technology pioneers (probably) could not imagine the use cases that facial recognition has today. For many, it was an academic exercise to prove what was possible. I was constantly drawing connections to emerging AI and LLM tools, a technology we also haven't tried to regulate or discuss the ethics of.
The book also forced me to think of all of the times I've willingly given up my biometric data and what that means about the ability to move around this world unbothered.
“Something that people don’t generally think about a lot, but which is actually so core to our ability to just function in a free society,” Wessler said, “is to be able to go about our lives, whether it’s mundane or really embarrassing, sensitive or private things, and not expect we’ll be identified instantaneously by a total stranger, whether that’s police or some billionaire trying out a fun toy or anyone in between.”