this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2023
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[–] CeeBee@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

That Thorn uses Amazon’s facial recognition tool is especially contentious. Research by MIT and the ACLU has shown that it falsely identified people of color,

No, what the ACLU did was knowingly leave the default setting of 80% confidence and do a "surprised" face when they got almost exactly 20% false detections.

They knew exactly what they were doing.

Amazon even responded to their claims criticising the lack of proper setup for such a complex system. But the ACLU's excuse was that it was the default setting, so they just used whatever it came with out of the box.

So all they managed to prove is that the default setting isn't adequate for accurate identification, and has nothing to do with what the system is able to do when correctly configured.

Edit: I see I'm being downvoted for stating facts.

[–] CmdrShepard@lemmy.one 22 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Is there any evidence to suggest that law enforcement agencies have these complex systems properly configured? I've seen plenty of articles talking about minorities being arrested after some facial recognition software misidentified them. Claiming that the ACLU isn't using the software properly doesn't mean that anyone else is using it properly.