IBM is leaving the face recognition technology market
IBM believes facial recognition technology violates fundamental human rights. For this reason, the corporation plans to abandon the further development of related software products and services. In addition to this, IBM also intends to curtail all research projects on this issue. According to the company, artificial intelligence, on the basis of which such technologies are built, is a serious mechanism that can become a tool of mass security. But at the same time, manufacturers and users of such AI identification systems, in particular, government law enforcement agencies, are responsible for the moral aspects of their use. IBM does not support facial recognition as a mass surveillance method that violates fundamental human rights and freedoms. The American company is in favor of starting negotiations to discuss the issue of whether it is advisable to use such technologies at all, including for law enforcement agencies.
At the same time, foreign media, including the American channel CNBC, the British agency Reuters, The Verge and a number of other major publications, believe that the development of facial recognition software products has not become a profitable project for IBM. Citing their own sources, media representatives claim that this direction did not bring significant income to the company, so the decision to close this direction was made a few months ago. Over the past decade, the face recognition system has changed significantly. Its improvement is largely due to the use of artificial intelligence developments. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has confirmed this by publishing the results of its study in 2019. The Institute claimed experimental evidence of the high accuracy of these technologies' algorithms, capable of recognizing a wide range of demographic differences. However, the identification systems have been criticized by the Institute's scientists for violating personal privacy. At the same time, the governments of some countries began to impose restrictions on the use of identification technologies, and in a number of cities (for example, San Francisco), regional authorities have established a complete ban on such systems. The lack of clearly defined standards for their use was cited as one of the reasons. The countries of the European Union believe that face recognition technology and its application have insufficient legal elaboration. For this reason, the EU is discussing the possibility of a five-year moratorium on the use of face identification systems in public areas of mass stay, including famous places that tourists usually visit. This delay would allow the authorities to devote sufficient time to drafting accompanying legislative rules that would avoid various abuses in the use of recognition systems. The Topic of Article: IBM is leaving the face recognition technology market. |
