For a more extreme hypothesis, Ariel Conn at FLI has voiced the omnipresent Western fear of resurgent ethnic cleansing, citing the ease of facial recognition of people’s race—but has that ever been the main obstacle to genocide? Moreover, the idea of thoughtless machines dutifully carrying out a campaign of mass murder takes a rather lopsided view of the history of ethnic cleansing and genocide, where the real death and suffering is not mitigated by the presence of humans in the loop more often than it is caused or exacerbated by human passions, grievances, limitations, and incompetency.
I am not a historian, but during the Nazi regime, The Netherlands had among the highest percentages of Jews killed in all of Western Europe. I remember historians blaming this on the Dutch having thorough records of who the Jews were and where they lived. Access to information is definitely a big factor in how succesful a genocidal regime can be.
The worry is not so much about killer robots enacting a mass murder campaign. The worry is that humans will use facial recognition algorithms to help state-sanctioned ethnic cleansing. This is not a speculative worry. There are a lot of papers on Uyghur facial recognition.
Okay, very well then. But if a polity wanted to do something really bad like ethnic cleansing, they would just allow facial recognition again, and get it easily from elsewhere. If a polity is liberal and free enough to keep facial recognition banned then they will not tolerate ethnic cleansing in the first place.
It’s like the Weimar Republic passing a law forbidding the use of Jewish Star armbands. Could provide a bit of beneficial inertia and norms, but not much besides that.
As per my initial comment, I’d compare it to pre-WWII Netherlands banning government registration of religion. It could safe tens of thousands of people from deportation and murder.
OK, sounds like the biggest issue is not the recognition algorithm itself (can be replicated or bought quickly) but the acquisition of databases of people’s identities (takes time and maybe consent earlier on). They can definitely come together, but otherwise, consider the possibilities (a) a city only uses face recognition for narrow cases like comparing video footage to a known suspect while not being able to do face-rec for the general population, and (b) a city has profiles and the ability to identify all its citizens for some other purpose but just doesn’t have the recognition algorithms (yet).
It seems like a big distinction between the two lies in how quickly they could be rolled out. A pre-WWII database of religion would have taken a long time to create, so pre-emptively not creating one significantly inhibited the Germans, while the US already had the census data so could intern the Japanese. But it doesn’t seem likely that not using facial recognition now would make it significantly harder to use later.
I am not a historian, but during the Nazi regime, The Netherlands had among the highest percentages of Jews killed in all of Western Europe. I remember historians blaming this on the Dutch having thorough records of who the Jews were and where they lived. Access to information is definitely a big factor in how succesful a genocidal regime can be.
The worry is not so much about killer robots enacting a mass murder campaign. The worry is that humans will use facial recognition algorithms to help state-sanctioned ethnic cleansing. This is not a speculative worry. There are a lot of papers on Uyghur facial recognition.
But who is talking about banning facial recognition itself? It is already too widespread and easy to replicate.
Just in the past weeks, San Francisco, Oakland and Cambridge.
Okay, very well then. But if a polity wanted to do something really bad like ethnic cleansing, they would just allow facial recognition again, and get it easily from elsewhere. If a polity is liberal and free enough to keep facial recognition banned then they will not tolerate ethnic cleansing in the first place.
It’s like the Weimar Republic passing a law forbidding the use of Jewish Star armbands. Could provide a bit of beneficial inertia and norms, but not much besides that.
As per my initial comment, I’d compare it to pre-WWII Netherlands banning government registration of religion. It could safe tens of thousands of people from deportation and murder.
OK, sounds like the biggest issue is not the recognition algorithm itself (can be replicated or bought quickly) but the acquisition of databases of people’s identities (takes time and maybe consent earlier on). They can definitely come together, but otherwise, consider the possibilities (a) a city only uses face recognition for narrow cases like comparing video footage to a known suspect while not being able to do face-rec for the general population, and (b) a city has profiles and the ability to identify all its citizens for some other purpose but just doesn’t have the recognition algorithms (yet).
It seems like a big distinction between the two lies in how quickly they could be rolled out. A pre-WWII database of religion would have taken a long time to create, so pre-emptively not creating one significantly inhibited the Germans, while the US already had the census data so could intern the Japanese. But it doesn’t seem likely that not using facial recognition now would make it significantly harder to use later.