Facial Recognition Tech From Amazon Can Feel Your Fear

When it comes to the top scariest modern technologies, the facial recognition tech from Amazon must be the one. As of now, this tech called ‘Rekognition’ has sparked more and more fears.

What ‘Rekognition’ can do make humans both curious and concerned. The tech can detect many kinds of emotions such as surprise, happiness, anger, sadness, confusion, calm, and disgust. More impressively, it may take us by greater surprise when it can now ‘read’ fear with high accuracy.

Also, according to Amazon, the latest updates of Rekognition even allow it to detect age more precisely.

The US tech company pointed out that this tech can leverage a database, which is built from millions of different faces, to track and analyze hundreds of people via an image.

The American Civil Liberties Union or ACLU, Northern California, has recently collected documents concerning a Rekognition that Police in Washington County, Oregon and Orlando was using. It’s a pity that these documents weren’t allowed to disclose pursuant to their agreement. That means we can’t know their detailed content.

The Artificial Intelligence (AI) system operates by penetrating police’s cameras, surveillance systems in cities, and scanning and comparing faces with the previous mugshots. The Washington Post reports that the Office of Sheriff has paid from $6 to $12 per month to gain access to this tech.

However, Orlando’s project appears to make us more nervous when the city is allegedly deploying the facial recognition tech in its whole network of cameras and in real-time.

That’s why the ACLU has expressed deep concern about the public’s right. The US organization believes that the facial recognition tech like Rekognition, in fact, will increase the negative discrimination minority communities have suffered from the police. They said,

In the collaboration with organizations for civil rights, the ACLU sent a letter to the CEO of Amazon Jeff Bezos and hoped that he would stop providing facial recognition software for government agencies and law enforcement. Last month, the Police Department in Orlando put an end to its program called Amazon Rekognition. They had temporarily ceased the program in the middle of June, after receiving a letter from ACLU.