Employee Criticizes Amazon's Facial Recognition Technology

AlphaAtlas

AlphaAtlas

[H]ard|Gawd
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On Medium, an Amazon employee spoke out against the company's own facial recognition software. In the op-ed, the employee says that Amazon is "currently allowing police departments around the country to purchase its facial recognition product, Rekognition, and I and other employees demand that we stop immediately." Earlier this year, the ACLU tested the service using mugshots of congress members, and found that "Rekognition" incorrectly identified 28 of them as criminals. But that apparently didn't stop Amazon's plans to sell the service to the police. Over 450 employees delivered a letter to Jeff Bezos himself, asking the company to exercise some ethical restraint, but Bezos would rather wait for "society's 'immune response.'" Medium also interviewed the anonymous employee in a separate article.

Amazon talks a lot about values of leadership. If we want to lead, we need to make a choice between people and profits. We can sell dangerous surveillance systems to police or we can stand up for what’s right. We can’t do both.
 
Yep. These employees are going to quickly learn how a power hierarchy works. You can either do the job, or you can not work there. But one option not available is forcing your morals on others.
 
So in less than one week Bezios says employers should pretty much ignore their employees entirely (okay he glossed it with a thin veil of patriotism, which is ironic) and now he effectively says public safety should be a testing ground until an incident / accident occurs. This is the type of example people give to claim sociopaths rule in the business world.


idk, Corporatism keeps on giving Capitalism a bad name. Sadly it's just more fuel to the fire of those who misunderstand & dislike capitalism in general :unsure:
 
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Look, if you don't like your company or what it produces, get a new job. WTH is this shit? I get paid to do work for my company. Period. If I don't like it, I can choose not to do it and get fired. I can also choose to get a different job.
 
steakman1971 said:
Look, if you don't like your company or what it produces, get a new job. WTH is this shit? I get paid to do work for my company. Period. If I don't like it, I can choose not to do it and get fired. I can also choose to get a different job.
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You're doing it wrong. You have to bitch and complain. There is no reason you should have to find a new job. The company should obviously just do what you choose because you're the one in charge.
 
Yeah, as if the person who's in charge is the one who'll pay the price when things go wrong, amirite? It's not like we didn't see that 12374519821374... times in the last 10 years.

Here's how it usually goes, tailored for the paticular Amazon situation we're talking about:
- Employee shuts up and does his job(tm)
- Thing goes wild and flags a bunch of innocents. Massacre ensues.
- Bezos go "dindu nuffin", employees get jail time.

Such a successful businessman, why on earth would he go on record saying things that amounts to "just go beta test live on the street"? Yep.
 
Amazon can't be the bad guy. Bezos owns the Washington post and has a huge CIA contract.

Sure if this was phantom menace they would be the trade federation, but well... we never saw the war from their point of view
 
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