Well done on creating a useful codec. One specifically optimised for
face data seems apropos the emerging demand for more intimate remote
interaction. Many teachers, therapists, doctors and social workers who
conduct remote sessions rely on clear non-verbal signalling and need
to read affect.
But the story has a deeper meaning for me (because of the book I am
writing). You switched from street face surveillance (an arguably
highly unethical application) to more intimate videoconferencing (a
more humanistic and socially beneficial end).
May I ask you in all sincerity, what if any ethical considerations
played a part in your change of direction?
I suspected from the title to read at least some sub-text that you
turned your back on mass-surveillance to find a "better" use for your
work. But you express no value judgements and only really mention that
the pandemic took away potential targets.
The ethical considerations played a large part of the pivot. I would rather help people communicate than surveil them.
That said, we build embeddable/edge face rec because we could, and I believe our partners who used it in the real pre-pandemic world found some very innocuous uses for it. In one case we replaced a system running all the faces through Rekognition with one running purely on devices and not storing any long-term data, which I think was an ethics win overall.
> You switched from street face surveillance (an arguably highly unethical application) to more intimate videoconferencing (a more humanistic and socially beneficial end).
Or that makes it easier to identify individuals as they give consent to have their face ‘fingerprinted’ as part of the app’s EULA.
If I were going to sell a mass-surveillance solution I’d certainly want to have the ability to identify individuals without having to scrape all of Facebook or whatever. As much as people hate on apple they do make it so carrying around one of their phones doesn’t make it easy for someone to identify you.
I, for one, would think twice about installing an app from someone who “pivoted away” from their Orwellian surveillance unicorn dreams.
Hi, we don't collect any data from the app, and have filled in the privacy etc. statements on the App Store accordingly.
Ideally I would like to collect faces to train the compression on, in which case we would have to consult with lawyers to come up with an EULA allowing us to do this. The advantage compared to using broadly available datasets to train on would be more realistic shot noise, low light images, and so on. I don't see any other valid business purpose of collecting people's faces.
We've been sitting on the face recognition tech since 2018, so if we'd wanted to become Clearview.ai we probably would have a long time ago.
> We've been sitting on the face recognition tech since 2018, so if we'd wanted to become Clearview.ai we probably would have a long time ago.
It says right at the beginning of the post you were doing quite well until the pandemic shut down businesses.
I try not to be overly critical (I really do) but this is one of those cases I just can’t help myself, I see no reason individual businesses should be running facial recognition on their customers and am kind of wary of someone who would enable that. And cities adding it to their collection of public cameras is beyond wrong.
IDK, somewhere we, as a society, decided 1984 was an instruction manual and not a warning…
There is a difference between doing well and becoming China in terms of surveillance. Most of our revenue were from just plain head counting and from tracking cars in a smart city project.
The one face rec system we actually sold was used to measure waiting times in a retail setting, and replaced an existing system that was using AWS Rekognition in the same manner, except with all the video footage going to the cloud. That license has long expired and the system is no longer running.
In any case, what is stated in the app's privacy statement is what we are doing. At the moment I don't even collect the IP addresses of users connecting.
Thanks for your honest answers Jacob, and the good spirit to do so in
public. This kind of discussion really helps with the topics I am
researching (and btw if I mention this or anyone else from HN in the
text it will always be in a non-identifying way). Good luck with your
project.
But the story has a deeper meaning for me (because of the book I am writing). You switched from street face surveillance (an arguably highly unethical application) to more intimate videoconferencing (a more humanistic and socially beneficial end).
May I ask you in all sincerity, what if any ethical considerations played a part in your change of direction?
I suspected from the title to read at least some sub-text that you turned your back on mass-surveillance to find a "better" use for your work. But you express no value judgements and only really mention that the pandemic took away potential targets.