Amazon’s Face Recognition Falsely Matched 28 Members of Congress with Mugshots

Re:Amazon’s Face Recognition Falsely Matched 28 Members of C... by guitarbill on Thursday July 26, 2018 @12:42PM (#17618801)

It's still ethically questionable. In fact I'm struggling to come up with a better example than facial recognition tech (except other mass surveillance). Maybe cutting corners while developing driverless cars that results in the death of a pedestrian.

Almost every engineering discipline has a code of ethics [0][1][2][3]. It's time software "engineering" grew up and did the same.

I rarely see ethics mentioned on HN, and granted, people's view differ. But it's weird we're not having that conversation at all.

[0] https://www.raeng.org.uk/policy/engineering-ethics/ethics

[1] https://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8.html

[2] https://www.nspe.org/resources/ethics/code-ethics

[3] http://www.asce.org/code-of-ethics/

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Amazon’s Face Recognition Falsely Matched 28 Members of C... by Kalium on Thursday July 26, 2018 @12:50PM (#17618870)

You're right! This is a critically important conversation that we absolutely need to have within our profession. It's very often ignored and there's no support system for people who take ethical stands.

So. Let's talk about ethics. I, personally, subscribe to the ACM code of ethics.

I think Rekognition, as built and presented, falls fully within that strict ethical code. It can be put to uses that are unethical, but that does not fall upon the people who made it. Certainly, an engineer creating a system such as the one the ACLU created would be acting unethically.

[ Parent | on HN ]