Everyone and their mother are now apparently building smart glasses, including Facebook. A BuzzFeed News report note that Facebook is apparently thinking of incorporating face recognition into its upcoming AR glasses. Um, no thanks.
In an internal meeting, Andrew Bosworth, Facebook’s vice president of augmented and virtual reality, said the social media giant was considering whether he had the legal authority to include facial recognition features in his AR glasses. According to Buzzfeed, Bosworth said that face recognition can be “the most difficult problem, where the benefits are so clear, and the risks so clear, and we do not know where to balance things.” His remark was in response to a question from an employee as to whether such technology has the potential for actual harm, specifically pursued. As for potential benefits, Bosworth pointed out that he secretly sought out the name of an acquaintance if you forgot it or if you had a face.
Here’s a lot to unpack. To begin with, it is not encouraging that the comments seem to focus on the legality or facial recognition to be included with these AR smart glasses, rather than on the ethical implications. The infamous incident involving some Google Glass a woman’s face ripped off in a bar has sparked a national debate over the privacy implications of smart glasses – and it do not have have facial recognition. Face recognition, even if you use it for “benign” reasons, is a much bigger ethical issue.
It is unclear, for example, whether anyone could act to have their face included in whatever database Facebook would use to activate this feature. It will be pretty disgusting if you walk around outside and unknowingly pass an weed that can then learn your name and possibly gain access to your Facebook profile from a 2-second encounter. Consent should be at the forefront of any face recognition technology, so it’s uncomfortable that BuzzFeed reported that Bosworth was apparently critical of Illinois. Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), which requires all companies that collect biometric data to obtain permission before doing so. In January, Facebook was ordered to pay a $ 650 million settlement in a lawsuit in Illinois alleging that the company violated BIPA by collecting facial recognition data without permission.
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With all of this in mind, it’s staggering that Facebook would even consider incorporating the technology into a device that already has a history of upsetting people. However, it is not obvious that Facebook will eventually include face recognition in its smart glasses. In a tweet following BuzzFeed’s report, Bosworth acknowledges that facial recognition is a very controversial topic and that the company will have a “very public discussion about the pros and cons.” He also stressed that Facebook’s smart glasses “would be fine without [facial recognition] but there were some nice use cases if it could be done in a way that the public and regulators were comfortable with. ‘
The last part is the crux of the matter here. Face recognition is still a strong discussion technology and there is by no means a society stamp on how it should be used. Earlier this month, Minneapolis banned police of the use of face recognition technology, and in November the Los Angeles police do the same. In total, 13 cities across the U.S., local law enforcement has banned the use of the technology. Several cities, including San Francisco and Boston, also banned the use of facial recognition by the government. And even though people and lawmakers are miraculously excited about the technology ahead of Facebook’s expected launch of these smart glasses later this year, Facebook of all companies does not have the biggest privacy record.
Simply put, society is barely embracing the idea of putting extremely simple smart glasses on their faces – let alone some with facial recognition. Devices like these have it previously failed, en will probably fail again, because no company has so far successfully convinced that it is a device they absolutely use need. If Facebook wants to do it the right way, it will release smart glasses that solve the problems of consumers – not a few worms that immediately fall over.