Lifeboat Foundation

The government wants to have a “search engine for faces,” but the experts are wary.

If you haven’t heard of Clearview AI then you should, as the company’s facial recognition technology has likely already spotted you. Clearview’s software goes through public images from social media to help law enforcement identify wanted individuals by matching their public images with those found in government databases or surveillance footage. Now, the company just got permission to be awarded a U.S. federal patent, according to Politico.

The firm is not without its fair share of controversy. It has long faced opposition from privacy advocates and civil rights groups. The first says it makes use of citizens’ faces without their knowledge or consent. The latter warns of the fact that facial recognition technology is notoriously prone to racially-based errors, misidentifying women and minorities much more frequently than white men and sometimes leading to false arrests.

The Israeli spyware maker in the Pegasus surveillance scandal said Friday it was investigating reports the firm’s technology was used to target iPhones of some US diplomats in Africa.

Apple has begun alerting people whose phones were hacked by NSO’s spyware, which essentially turns handsets into pocket spying devices and sparked controversy this year after reportedly being used on activists, journalists and politicians.

“On top of the independent investigation, NSO will cooperate with any relevant government authority and present the full information we will have,” the firm said in a statement.

Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook is pulling the plug on its facial recognition program. The company is planning to delete more than one billion people’s individual facial recognition templates, and will no longer automatically recognize people’s faces in photos or videos as a result of this change, according to its own post. The use of facial recognition technology has a disparate impact on people of color, disenfranchising a group who already face inequality, and Facebook seems to be acknowledging this inherent harm. The Breakdown You Need to Know.

CultureBanx reported that Meta seems to always be embroiled in corporate drama and with intense scrutiny. When you add that to the growing concern from users and regulators that facial recognition space remains complicated, an exit makes sense. More than 600 million daily active users on Facebook had opted into the use of the face recognition technology.

Research shows commercial artificial intelligence systems tend to have higher error rates for women and black people. Some facial recognition systems would only confuse light-skin men 0.8% of the time and would have an error rate of 34.7% for dark-skin women. Just imagine surveillance being used with these flawed algorithms. A 2018 IDC report noted it expects worldwide spending on cognitive and AI systems to reach $77.6 billion in 2022.

One of China’s biggest AI solution providers SenseTime is a step closer to its initial public offering. SenseTime has received regulatory approval to list on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, according to media reports. Founded in 2014, SenseTime was christened as one of China’s four “AI Dragons” alongside Megvii, CloudWalk, and Yitu. In the second half of the 2010s, their algorithms found much demand from businesses and governments hoping to turn real-life data into actionable insights. Cameras embedded with their AI models watch city streets 24 hours. Malls use their sensing solutions to track and predict crowds on the premises.

SenseTime’s three rivals have all mulled plans to sell shares either in mainland China or Hong Kong. Megvii is preparing to list on China’s Nasdaq-style STAR board after its HKEX application lapsed.

The window for China’s data-rich tech firms to list overseas has narrowed. Beijing is making it harder for companies with sensitive data to go public outside China. And regulators in the West are wary of facial recognition companies that could aid mass surveillance.

Continue reading “China’s AI giant SenseTime readies Hong Kong IPO” »

This new reality promises robotic dogs to enforce social distancing and publicly owned flying taxis to provide transportation since private vehicles are only available to the rich. The technology is currently being rolled out in other western nations, including Canada.

On a hard disk somewhere in the surveillance archives of Singapore’s Changi prison is a video of Jolovan Wham, naked, alone, performing Hamlet.

Get ready for the ‘White Bat’.

What’s the best way to counter gossip? Coming out with the truth. That seems to be the idea behind a new video released by the U.S. Air Force’s Profession of Arms Center of Excellence (PACE).

Continue reading “Is the US Air Force About to Unveil Some New Spy Drones?” »

Whoever controls AI controls the world

“Most Valuable AI unicorn” goes for IPO.

Continue reading “‘Most valuable’ AI unicorn SenseTime gets Hong Kong IPO — sources” »

Five prototypes were tested before the project was shelved.

In what might seem counter-intuitive at first, the U.S. Army supported the development of a helicopter that had no engine. One can even visit the Army’s Aviation Museum at Fort Rucker in Alabama to catch a glimpse of this design by the American Helicopter Company that is fondly called Jet Jeep.

The Jet Jeep was thought of many decades ago as the solution for a light observation needed by the Army. The U.S. Army was looking for a flight-capable option for light surveillance and by that, it meant enough to carry one or two people at the most. This is quite like the problem jet pack makers are trying to solve these days. But this was way back in the 1950s and helicopters and aircraft were largely the way flying worked.

Continue reading “The US Army Built Engineless Helicopters in the ‘50s. Here is Why It Didn’t End Well” »

There’s no road to computers that think like people that wouldn’t take us through 24/7 computer surveillance first. Thiel says. Is that what we want?