'Too dangerous:' Why even Google was afraid to release this technology

NightGaunts@kbin.social to News@lemmy.world – 137 points –
npr.org

A startup called PimEyes allows anyone to identify a stranger within seconds with just a photo of the person's face. The technology has alarmed privacy advocates worldwide.

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The US military has, in all likelihood, been already capable of this for the past 15-30 years. Google has no market other than the public, and there's no way to stop it from tagging rich people as "that asshole who owns what used to be twitter" but also the general public (us) would just end up flagging people we hate or envy or who we want revenge on to ruin people's reputations.

There is no upside for a tech like that in the hands of big money, not even for big money; done the way Google would do it, it would fracture society like nothing before it and that includes utterly destroying the economy before leading to some sort of nuclear exchange.

So the PimEyes subscription feeā€¦ is the only thing preventing global thermal nuclear war?

Seems as plausible as anything these days ;-)

This technology has been in place in public spaces like airports for at least a decade. They claimed it was to fight terrorism by scanning and collecting models of everyone's face looking for known terrorists. They said that they could identify the terrorists because even with a disguise, you can't alter the shape of your facial bone structure.