每日跟讀#636: Amazon’s facial recognition causing human rights concerns

Amazon.com Inc. announced on June 10 that the company will continue to offer its facial recognition (FR) technology to any government agency that follows the law, in contrast with rival Microsoft Corp. “We will serve the federal government, and they will have to use the technology responsibly,” said Andy Jassy, the CEO of Amazon Web Services. He also hoped that the authorities in charge would act promptly, “otherwise, you’ll have 50 different laws in 50 different states.”

美國亞馬遜公司六月十日宣布，該公司仍將會持續提供「臉部辨識」（FR）技術給任何守法的政府機構，此一作法和其對手微軟公司有所不同。亞馬遜網路服務執行長賈西說：「我們仍將為聯邦政府提供服務，他們必須負責任地使用該技術。」但他希望主管單位能加快腳步，「否則未來五十個州可能有五十套不同的法律。」

According to Reuters, Microsoft said that the company had rejected a similar deal with a California law enforcement agency, fearing that it might lead to innocent women and ethnic minorities being “disproportionately” held for questioning. Such “artificial intelligence” (AI) tools are often trained largely on images of white men.

根據路透報導，微軟表示該公司曾拒絕加州執法機關一項類似的交易，因為擔憂這會導致無辜女性和少數族群遭到「不成比例」的盤查。這類「人工智慧」（AI）工具大多以白人男性的影像來進行訓練。

Despite Amazon’s announcement, the New York Times reported on the same day that tens of thousands of images of travelers and vehicle license plates stored by the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have been hacked recently, once more highlighting the security issue.

然而在亞馬遜作出宣布的當天，《紐約時報》報導，存放在美國海關與邊境保護局、高達數萬份旅客及車牌的影像近日驚傳被駭，再次突顯了影像安全的重要性。

Source article: http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/lang/archives/2019/06/27/2003717628