UPDATED AS OF 5 FEBRUARY 2019
(this page is continually updated so you may wish to bookmark it)
Our introductory video on facial recognition technology :
Facial recognition in most cases is well-intended and is meant to make life easier. However, the nature of this technology poses a threat to the anonymity of those using it and therefore raises data privacy issues. Uses of the technology such as China’s proposed facial recognition database which is intended to be able to identify any of the country’s 1.3 billion citizens in 3 seconds or less (see link below) have raised those privacy concerns.
One of the biggest selling points of facial recognition technology (at least from the vendor’s standpoint) is that it works at a distance. This negates the need for the direct contact necessary with any security system such as fingerprint scanners.
As we discuss in the video above, facial recognition systems work by creating a blueprint of sorts of a face. As the motion graphic showed you, this is done by taking an image with a camera and then measuring distances on a face, known as nodal points, including between eyes and the width of noses.
While initially a form of computer application, it has seen wider uses in recent times on mobile platforms and in other forms of technology, such as robotics. It is typically used as access control in security systems and can be compared to other biometrics such as fingerprint or eye iris recognition systems. Although the accuracy of facial recognition system as a biometric technology is lower than iris recognition and fingerprint recognition, it is widely adopted due to its contactless and non-invasive process. Recently, it has also become popular as a commercial identification and marketing tool. Other applications include advanced human-computer interaction, video surveillance, automatic indexing of images, and video database, among others.
This is a complex area so to assist you we have assembled the resources below … and our media team will continue to add to and update this list:
- “Face Value” (Scientific American, February 2019). Insightful article on how the brain reads faces: the brain regions that process faces reveal deep insights into the neural mechanisms of vision. From birth, faces are important in the individual’s social interaction. Face perceptions are very complex as the recognition of facial expressions involves extensive and diverse areas in the brain. Excellent piece, good graphics (click here)
- “San Francisco Wants to Ban Government Face Recognition” (The Atlantic Magazine, 5 February 2019). San Francisco is hoping to ban local-government use of facial-recognition technology. If lawmakers pass the ordinance, it would make the California city the first in the nation with such an outright ban. But San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin’s bill hones in on face-recognition as used in policing. So what about, say, that infamous face-unlock feature on Apple’s latest iPhone model? (click here)
- “From Davos 2019: Henry Blodget leads a panel on facial recognition technology” (WEF 23 January 2019). My CTO attended Davos this year and he was able to catch a pretty interesting panel. The speakers were: Kay Firth-Butterfield (Head of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, World Economic Forum Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution); Kenneth Roth (Executive Director, Human Rights Watch); Marietje Schaake (Member of European Parliament); and Brad Smith (President, Microsoft Corporation). Henry Blodget (of dot-com era fame or infamy, depending on your take) is now CEO, Co-Founder, and Editorial Director, Insider Inc.
It runs 52 minutes and pretty much runs the gamut: What is the role of government, civil society, and the companies that create and use this technology? (click here)
Schaake is pretty much a whirlwind in Brussels, vice chair of the European Parliament’s delegation for relations with the United States, and she has been on the front lines of dealing with US-EU relations … or maybe non-relations is the better word.
But she has also been a loud voice in Europe on restricting the export of surveillance equipment, especially facial recognition technology.
- “Startups Embroiled in Debate Over Ethics of Facial Recognition” (The Information, 22 January 2019). Facial recognition is still in the early stages of development, and the software has had well-documented challenges. One of the biggest privacy issues is that law enforcement agencies have virtually unfettered access to image databases that could be used for facial recognition. This article puts it all into perspective (click here)
- “Facebook’s ’10 Year Challenge’ Is Just a Harmless Meme — Right?” (Wired Magazine, 15 January 2019). The author, Kate O’Neil (a keynote speaker and author who writes extensively about the human experience, particularly where it intersects with data and technology) notes in this article “10 years ago I probably would have played along with the profile picture aging meme going around on Facebook and Instagram. Now? I ponder how all this data could be mined to train facial recognition algorithms on age progression and age recognition”. It’s a powerful article, taking us down a path where this data flows downstream and becomes enmeshed with our location tracking, response and purchase behavior, and other signals, where “it could bring about some genuinely creepy interactions” (click here)
- “Chinese Facial Recognition Will Take over the World in 2019” (Michael K. Spencer, 15 January 2019). I have been reading Mike Spencer’s columns since I was a wee lad … and I am 30 years old than him. He is one of the most prolific writers on the web (a self-proclaimed “tech Futurist”) and he writes about AI, blockchain, social media, start-ups, technology in general and whatever meets his fancy: economics, innovation, etc., etc. The best facial recognition startups are in China, by a long-shot, but this we knew (they all seemed to be at CES last month). China’s goal? To identify anyone, anytime, anywhere in China within three seconds. This piece will set the stage for you on the “tech wars yet to come” — and AI-War in all its glory (click here)
- “Understanding the Hidden Bias in Emotion-Reading AIs” (Singularity Hub, 11 January 2019). A new study has found that emotion recognition systems assign more negative emotions to black men’s faces than white men’s. Emotion recognition is the process of identifying human emotion, most typically from facial expressions as well as from verbal expressions. The facial recognition technology applications … feature extraction of facial expressions with combination of neural network for the recognition of different facial emotions (happy, sad, angry, fear, surprised, neutral etc.) … is disturbing everyone. This article provides some context. (click here)
- “The Most Controversial Biometric of All – Facial Recognition” (Infosec Institute, January 2019). This is a very good introduction piece. Just like fingerprint recognition, facial recognition is one of those biometric modalities which everybody can relate to. There is a very good (non-technical) explanation of how the technology works (click here)
