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Google is torn on the topic of face recognition: to roll out, or not?
What would you do?You're sitting on top of an innovation that would rock the world. This particular invention would change the entire make-up of both the virtual and real worlds -- in fact, it would inexorably merge them together, for better or worse. I am of course talking about face recognition.
Face recognition already exists -- be it to biometrically to open doors, or ostensibly as a security measure in police states like the United Kingdom -- but it doesn't exist as a commodity. It doesn't exist as a technology that you or I can play with. That's what Google's sitting on right now: a face recognition search engine. CEO Eric Schmidt simply has to flip a switch and we'd suddenly be able to upload photos and find out exactly who is in them.
It's a chilling thought which is made a thousand times more calcifying by the fact that it's Google wielding the technology. If it was any other company -- one that doesn't already have access to billions of images all round the world -- we wouldn't bat an eyelid. But because it is Google we have a predicament.
We're at the point where you could snap a person's face with Google Goggles and find out their entire life story: their employment, their friends, what they looked like before they dyed their hair. I don't know where the societal breaking point for pervasive, omnipresent technology is... but I think we're getting close.
Comments
9
Subscribe to commentsskalpaMay 20th 2010 11:09AM
LOL. I am soooooooo happy to not have a Facebook account nor all my private life uploaded somewhere on Flickr right now. :-)
Sebastian AnthonyMay 20th 2010 11:12AM
Good point, actually -- only the most private Facebook accounts don't expose a profile picture and associated name...
Jonathan HarfordMay 20th 2010 11:30AM
"It's a chilling thought which is made a thousand times more calcifying by the fact that it's Google wielding the technology. If it was any other company -- one that doesn't already have access to billions of images all round the world -- we wouldn't bat an eyelid."
Is it chilling regardless of Google, or would we not bat an eyelid if Google weren't involved? You're contradicting yourself.
Seriously, though... Google's proven to be (or at least appear to be) pretty good about privacy concerns. I'd trust them with this technology way before I'd trust, say, Facebook. Or Yahoo.
"We're at the point where you could snap a person's face with Google Goggles and find out their entire life story: their employment, their friends, what they looked like before they dyed their hair."
Well... only if you can already google that information about them from knowing their name.
The privacy issues are definitely worth discussing, but can we do this without the hysteria?
MikeMay 20th 2010 12:03PM
Well, I'd love to, and up til now I've been quite relaxed in the way Google has been handling privacy.
But then you read the infamous CEO interview (http://gawker.com/5419271/google-ceo-secrets-are-for-filthy-people), which suggests that that is more of a fortuitous coincidence rather than a deliberate "don't be evil strategy".
"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."
In itself this is a horrible, horrible statement. While I understand that people have been giving up (voluntarily and knowingly) a lot more privacy than ever before, we value the part of it that we do keep all the more, and this comment shows a profound lack of respect for that.
That leads to hysteria, more than anything.
On the one hand, having terminator eyes that identify everyone for you (no more remembering names) seems a cool future, this would also mean that those of us dumb or young enough to have commited something stupid to youtube (or somewhere else in the public domain), will NEVER EVER (litteraly) be able to live it down anymore. There is something known as the right to forgetfulness, and that seems in danger here...
robin_rosengrenMay 20th 2010 12:51PM
Given that Picasa, owned by Google, can get faces wrong when I upload a photo album with approximately 20 people, how great can their face recognition be?
mljMay 20th 2010 4:50PM
Good enough to rule the world....
turbotapeMay 22nd 2010 6:46PM
Picasa's face recognition awed me at first. But then I saw how flawed it is. The technology is far, far from doing what this article describes.
In a few years perhaps...
ShadowMay 23rd 2010 2:36AM
I know this isn't that type of site, but does anyone else feel like this is a Death Note joke waiting to happen?
Sebastian AnthonyMay 23rd 2010 6:08AM
The only anime that I've seen!
But I only watched half of it...