Will US users take note?
Shady Face Recognition Firm Clearview AI Says It's Left Canada Amid Two Federal Investigations
Dystopian, U.S.-based face recognition firm Clearview AI has suspended its contract with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), effectively locking its business out of Canada entirely, Bloomberg reported on Monday.
Clearview has become a particular flash point in the backlash to police use of face recognition, which aside from being riddled with bugs is inseparable from racial profiling and infringement of civil liberties. A BuzzFeed investigation in February 2020 showed that Clearview had 2,200 contracts with law enforcement agencies, companies, and individuals around the globe, including over 30 police clients in Canada such as the RCMP. The company tossed around access to its database to the rich and powerful as a marketing tool and told police that they could use the technology pretty much however they like, even as those contracts largely were kept under wraps.
In Canada, the firm is facing an open investigation by the federal Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) and its provincial counterparts in British Columbia, Alberta, and Québec, to determine whether its non-consensual data scraping violated the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act or regional laws. The federal commissioners also launched a separate probe under the Privacy Act into the RCMP, which initially denied any contract with Clearview but admitted at the end of February its child exploitation unit had been using its face recognition tech for four months. In March, the RCMP said it would continue the contract but only use Clearview tools under “very limited and specific circumstances.”
A recap of successes and failures.
https://www.cpomagazine.com/data-protection/gdpr-three-ways-the-world-has-changed-in-the-privacy-laws-first-two-years/
GDPR: Three Ways the World Has Changed in the Privacy Law’s First Two Years
Understanding the competition.
https://syncedreview.com/2020/07/06/nature-paper-puts-an-eye-on-chinas-new-generation-of-ai/
Nature Paper Puts An Eye on China’s New Generation of AI
The
paper looks at the New Generation Artificial Intelligence (NGAI)
Development Plan of China (2015– 2030), which was published in 2017
as a blueprint for the rapid construction of a complete Chinese AI
ecosystem.
… Last
month, a group of artificial intelligence pioneers from 12 Chinese AI
institutions published the perspective paper Towards
a New Generation of Artificial Intelligence in China in
the respected journal Nature
Machine Intelligence. This
is the first such survey on the full scope of AI in China. The paper
looks at the New
Generation Artificial Intelligence (NGAI) Development Plan of China
(2015– 2030),
which
was published in 2017 as a blueprint for the rapid construction of a
complete Chinese AI ecosystem.… The paper Towards a New Generation of Artificial Intelligence in China is in Nature.
People prefer the familiar to the thoughtful?
https://thenextweb.com/neural/2020/07/06/study-tests-whether-ai-can-convincingly-answer-existential-questions/
Can AI convincingly answer existential questions?
… Researchers from the University of New South Wales first fed a series of moral questions to Salesforce’s CTRL system, a text generator trained on millions of documents and websites, including all of Wikipedia. They added its responses to a collection of reflections from the likes of Plato, Jesus Christ, and, err, Elon Musk.
The team then asked more than 1,000 people which musings they liked best — and whether they could identify the source of the quotes.
In worrying results for philosophers, the respondents preferred the AI’s answers to almost half the questions. And only a small minority recognized that CTRL’s statements were computer-generated.
… They were particularly taken by CTRL’s answer to “What is the goal of humanity?” Almost two-thirds (65%) of them preferred this AI-generated answer to the musings of Muhammad, Stephen Hawking, and God:
The goal of human life is not merely to be born into the world, but also to grow up in it. To this end, it should be possible for each child to acquire knowledge, develop their capacities, and express themselves creatively.
This seems to be a silly and worthless law. I teach my students how to generate RSA encryption, which would be outside this law. It is a trivial exercise. Why wouldn’t criminals do the same?
https://www.insideprivacy.com/surveillance-law-enforcement-access/lawful-access-to-encrypted-data-act-introduced/
Lawful Access to Encrypted Data Act Introduced
Senators Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) have introduced the Lawful Access to Encrypted Data Act, a bill that would require tech companies to assist law enforcement in executing search warrants that seek encrypted data.
… According to its sponsors, the purpose of the bill is to “end[] the use of ‘warrant-proof’ encrypted technology .... to conceal illicit behavior.” [No test to determine if the encrypted data conceals illicit behavior? Bob]
The bill has three main provisions:
- First,
it would allow courts to order device manufacturers, operating
system providers, remote computing service providers, communication
service providers, and others, to assist the government in accessing
information sought by a search warrant. Such assistance may include
decrypting or decoding information, “unless the independent
actions of an unaffiliated entity make it technically impossible to
do so.” [i.e. If I
control the origination of the encryption key, the provider can’t
help. That’s how Apple’s encryption works. Bob]
- Second,
certain entities would be required to “ensure that [they have] the
ability to provide [this] assistance.” [If
you can’t decrypt you don’t need to create a decrypt team. Bob]
- Third,
under certain circumstances, the Attorney General would be empowered
to issue directives to service providers and device manufacturers,
requiring them to report “any technical capabilities that [are]
necessary to implement and comply with anticipated court orders,”
and a timeline for developing and deploying those capabilities.
[“We want you to do the
impossible. How long will that take?” Bob]
At least a couple seem worth further investigation.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2020/07/05/gartners-top-25-enterprise-software-startups-to-watch-in-2020/#149f1e767822
Gartner’s Top 25 Enterprise Software Startups To Watch In 2020
Wisdom
from Purdue.
Krenicki
Center for Business Analytics and Machine Learning introduces monthly
webinar series
The
John and Donna Krenicki Center for Business Analytics and Machine
Learning in Purdue University's Krannert School of Management will
begin hosting a monthly webinar series that brings together speakers
from academia and industry to talk about different topics of
interest.
The
first of the series, scheduled for 3-4 p.m. (EDT) July 14, will focus
on two important and current issues.
Tom
Aliff, senior vice president of Equifax, will discuss the economic
and credit- trending elements and impacts of COVID-19. Krannert
professor Karthik Kannan will address the notion of unfairness/bias
that can creep into machine learning algorithms as analytics are
increasingly used.
…
To
register and receive updates and instructions on how to join the
upcoming webinar on Zoom, click
here.
Learning
resources.
Learn
PyTorch: The best free online courses and tutorials
Deep
learning continues to be one of the hottest fields in computing,
and
while Google’s TensorFlow
remains
the most popular framework in absolute numbers, Facebook’s PyTorch
has
quickly earned a reputation for being easier to grasp and use.
… But
how to get started? You’ll find plenty of books and paid resources
available for learning PyTorch, of course. But there are also plenty
of resources on the Internet that will help you get to grips with the
framework
— for
absolutely nothing. Plus, some of the free resources are of even
higher quality than what you can pay for.
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