Microsoft's moral stance on facial recognition is good for everyone (especially Microsoft)

Image Credit: Microsoft

In contempo years, AI-driven facial recognition systems have been in the news for declining to recognise dark-skinned people and women as consistently as information technology does white males. IBM, Microsoft, Google and other companies that are driving this applied science inside their products, selling it to other companies and which promise to implement it throughout governments, municipalities and the individual sector have all been hit with the touch of the engineering science'south brusk-comings.

Google's arrangement identified African Americans every bit primates forcing the company to remove certain content from its organization to foreclose the association going forrad. A contempo study showed how IBM'southward and Microsoft's facial recognition tech was far less authentic at recognizing women and minorities than white men.

To prevent the bias and bigotry that these systems volition have on society if left unchecked, Microsoft is leading a movement for its regulation by the government. This commitment isn't only near doing the right thing, withal. Microsoft stands to make a lot of money if governments, the tech manufacture, the private sector and consumers perceive it equally a trusted leader and provider of AI-driven facial recognition camera technology.

Young tech is bad for business

During Microsoft'due south 2022 BUILD Developers Conference the company introduced its AI-driven camera technology equally role of its edge computing strategy. The applied science is capable of recognizing people, activity, objects and more and tin can proactively act based on what it sees. Microsoft demonstrated how it notified a worker on a worksite that another worker needed a tool he was near. Microsoft also showed how in a hospital setting the organisation, continued to a patient's data, alerted staff to his needs as it "watched" him walking, distressed, in a hallway.

The strength of this system is that it is software-based and can be deployed across camera systems already in use by businesses, schools, governments, municipalities and more.

Microsoft seeks to dominate the manufacture every bit a platform company by providing industry standard software and tools like Office, Azure and more than to businesses and governments to assistance them "reach more." Microsoft's AI-driven camera tech is merely another platform the visitor hopes to sell to businesses and governments then that as those entities "accomplish more" Microsoft will gain market place authorisation and brand more coin. As a relatively young engineering science, notwithstanding, bad press is bad for business.

Bias in, bias out

The biases currently reflected in AI-driven facial recognition systems are likely a result of the "biases" (though peradventure unintentional) inherent to the motorcar learning processes used to train them. White males make upward the majority of the people working in IT. Thus, the perspectives of the teams creating these systems are relatively homogenous. The breadth of input, the array of considerations, the assortment of models and forrard-looking impact of the technology on certain groups that a more diverse team would have contributed to building and preparation these systems was lost.

Microsoft is cognizant of the immediate social implications and ultimately the long-term financial touch on of deploying its facial recognition tech with its current limitations. Thus, it has refused two potentially lucrative (in the short term) sales. The company declined selling to a California constabulary enforcement agency for use in cars and body cams considering the organisation, after running face scans would likely cause minorities and women to exist held for questioning more often than whites. Microsoft's president Brad Smith acknowledged that since the AI was primarily trained with white men, it has a higher charge per unit of mistaken identity with women and minorities. Microsoft as well refused to deploy its facial recognition tech in the camera systems of a country the nonprofit, Freedom House, deemed not gratuitous.

Microsoft's refusal to brand these sales is consistent with its stance articulated by Smith in a web log post:

We don't believe that the world will be best served by a commercial race to the lesser, with tech companies forced to choose between social responsibility and market place success.

I'm confident donating considerations are contributing to Microsoft's "high-road" approach to facial recognition tech. I likewise believe the company realizes that if other industry players take a less socially-conscious position, negative fallout could affect the techs acceptance and ultimately Microsoft'due south goal to provide a platform with a wide and lucrative range of potential applications.

One bad Apple ruins facial recognition for the agglomeration

Microsoft wants loftier standards of quality and accurateness for facial recognition beyond the entire industry so that potential customers including governments, businesses and the public volition have confidence in the tech. Microsoft realizes that despite the progress it has fabricated, based on an evaluation by the National Institute of Standards and Engineering science (NIST) (and as a top-ranked developer of facial recognition tech), for the tech to be accustomed there must be a uniformity of standards that precludes the biases observed in early systems. This is why Microsoft is taking the lead to petition the government to accept steps to regulate the tech.

Microsoft has proactively provided three areas information technology hopes regulation will address:

Bias and discrimination
Intrusion into individual privacy
Government's mass surveillance encroachment'south on democratic freedoms

In 2022 I discussed many of these same concerns. Intelligent cameras that are deployed in the private and public sector has the potential of allowing tracking of individuals, logging behavior and actions, and giving unprecedented ability to governments, employers or malicious actors who have access to this data.

Reading between the PR lines

Interestingly, despite Microsoft'south gung-ho advocating for user privacy, Smith is somewhat lenient regarding consumer consent and facial recognition tech. He said:

[In Europe], consent to utilise facial recognition services could be subject field to background privacy principles, such equally limitations on the utilise of the data beyond the initially divers purposes and the rights of individuals to access and correct their personal data. But from our [Microsoft'due south] perspective, this is likewise an area, possibly particularly in the United States, where this new regulation might take one quick step and then nosotros all can larn from feel before deciding whether additional steps should follow.

Reading betwixt the lines, Smith seems to be saying Microsoft'due south privacy position may be less ambitious than Europe's in relation to employ of user data beyond initially divers purposes and limiting user access to their information. Microsoft stands to gain a lot if its continually evolving products and services, tin share what they currently know and continuously learn about users from their action with products and what intelligent cameras observe.

Image is everything

Paradigm credit: CNBC

Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella has been driving the visitor forward with a mission of empathy, social and environmental responsibility and inclusion for people with disabilities. I believe that those efforts along with a desire for universal standards for facial recognition tech are genuine. Withal, Microsoft is a business. Parallel to these noble motives is a desire to dominate the industry and polish on Wall Street.

Microsoft is pushing for government regulation of facial recognition tech with laws that require transparency, enable 3rd-party testing and comparisons, ensure meaningful human review, avoid use for unlawful bigotry and protect people's privacy. Equally noble as this sounds, I believe that Microsoft's motives are also rooted in a goal to ensure companies don't injure the public perception of the tech earlier Microsoft can establish itself equally the market leader.

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