Tech giants Amazon, IBM and Microsoft have committed to stop the sale of facial recognition tools to United States’ law enforcement agencies because of the built racial bias in the algorithms in the wake of the brutal murder of George Floyd. I have been contacted by many journalists to comment on these developments and my company’s position.
I believe this has opened a necessary debate about the implications of artificial intelligence and abuse of power by police states. I think the position taken by these companies were necessary but believe they should be temporary. Many activists are calling for a total ban of facial recognition, I am totally against that. As a black man I understand where they are coming from and as a business leader, I believe it is our responsibility as enterprises to present the public with best use cases.
As an engineer I can assure the problem of racial and gender bias in these systems will be solved, the more pressing question is that freedom and privacy as governments gear up to increase their power. I have been advised to never voice my political opinions because they might conflict with those of a client, or worse, make my company a target of political campaigns, but I will tell you today, I believe in maximum freedom and personal liberty. The right for an individual to do as they please provided, they do not harm the next person. And this is what I believe we should all fight to protect. As companies, we must not allow authorities to use our tools to suppress and undermine the basic freedoms of our society, freedom that so many people died for you and I to have. And as individuals, we must jealously protect our privacy against these large corporations and administrators using it to train algorithms without our consent. That is my position.
What about my company's? As a company, we will continue developing object detection capabilities for driverless cars. This is one area we believe AI will do more good than bad, save lives. We recognise the danger of our products to livelihoods; it is a challenge we determined to overcome. As Shepherd's Eye, we have committed to creating two more jobs directly or indirectly for every single job we automate in this beautiful country of ours.