IBM promised to back off facial recognition, then signed a $70M contract for it

https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/31/23852955/ibm-uk-government-contract-biometric-facial-recognition

by rntn • 3 years ago

245 123 3 years ago

seydor4• 3 years ago

I think it s impossible to hold off the oncoming onslaught of Big State powered by AI , but i think we are doing a very bad job of telling the public to prepare for it, starting with AI powered online manipulation

JohnFen2• 3 years ago

I'd like to prepare for it. How?

seydor4• 3 years ago

You 're probably in tech so you already know. But the public isn't even aware how easy it is to e.g. copy someone's voice with AI. The mainstream news are uninterested

gumballindie8• 3 years ago

Ok, I'll say it.

I am actively moving away from any type of serveillance device and software, where possible of course. Moved away from the data scraping OS made by windows to linux. De google, de apple, and spread the word. There may not be much we can do against the sheer amount of public surveillance we enjoy, a level that makes the STASI and KGB pale in comparison, other than voting voting and voting. Protesting and vandalism would only ridicule any attempt.

Oh and I feel that there may also be a market for people that want an online presence but in a protected way. So starting businesses around that may also help. Nothing fancy. Just simple stuff such as not tracking users and not manipulating them. Requires avoiding venture capital, and that's fine. No point in being a paper millionaire with no life anyway.

HtmlProgrammer2• 3 years ago

The general public won’t care until it impacts them personally.

Time to buy that country estate surrounded by trees so the surveillance state can’t see the finer details of your eyes with their AI cameras

mistrial92• 3 years ago

there is no "general public" just like there is no 2.5 children. More than 1 million working adults in the USA are in uniform or under non-disclosure to security sensitive things.. you will never address those people in the same breath as lowest-common-denominator fear mongering, as is immediately and unwisely suggested here by "good" people.. oh by the way .. "caring about human rights" people will start to behave in a mob like any other mob.. in many cases.. crowds make bad decisions.. etc

corinroyal• 3 years ago

And never leave. No going to the store. No driving. No friends coming by. No servants. Every supply run is a clandestine operation.

Individualist solutions don't work here. Only regulatory solutions can address the source of the problem and those require solidarity and collective action.

hedora2• 3 years ago

The surveillance state adopted to lidar decades ago, specifically because it can see through trees.

gumballindie8• 3 years ago

Just tell folks on the right that ai is going to take their rights, freedoms and guns and let them run with it. I am not joking, the only way to "wake" people up is to leverage those that, oddly enough, have predicted many of the upcoming changes. The issues with their conspiracy theories are with the how, whom, and why. There's no cabal of folks injecting people with microcips to control them and covid wasn't it. It's just regular corporations and corrupt politicians selling them technological sweets in order to extort them for money. Easy. Let them run wild, and hopefully the left and the right find middle ground and change this trajectory.

seydor4• 3 years ago

that's not a bad idea

Barrin92• 3 years ago

the logical endpoint of that is some crazy guy shooting up a pizza place, not civil society taking back control of technology pointed at them. Ever played the original Deus Ex? There's a reason Musk on his Bob Page arc loves to stoke conspiracy nonsense and it isn't because it produces effective, rational governance reigning powerful people in

nologic01• 3 years ago

alas they are very selective about which rights they are concerned about. e.g. very territorial about physical space, but largely numb to big tech surveillance.

but indeed this issue is not aligned with traditional political divisions. there is simply no meaningful part of society that is better of from this large scale digital surveillance that is being inflicted against all people's best interest. the only beneficiary is the small oligarchy that is orchestrating this.

freedomben2• 3 years ago

The only problem with that plan is that it's going to warp in ways that make us facepalm, especially because they like to have a named antagonist. Impossible to predict how it would go, but one thought might be that it will turn into "Bill Gates is investing in facial recognition so he can put us all in prison camps" or something.

Unfortunately the damage from that will be severe and will probably make everyone on the left double down about how AI is "safe" and all that. Remember Alex Jones et al conspiracy theories about powerful people being involved in a pedophile ring? For years it was widely mocked and dismissed (including by me) and then Epstein came to light. The prediction was far from perfect, but was right in overall gist, but the suicide was largely the end of the reporting. A lawsuit here and there but very little news coverage and a lot of weird stuff was happening around that, to the point that even "regular" people think it was a conspiracy and Epstein didn't kill himself. But it went nowhere.

kingkawn• 3 years ago

The thing that AI has already made possible is a total police state. Communication analysis can now feasibly be carried out on all text/spoken dialogue transmitted within a given domain, whereas in the past it was limited by the number of human agents available for this work.

paxys• 3 years ago

Who the hell is signing a large contract with IBM and expecting them to deliver working tech?

IBM signed a $69.8 million (£54.7 million) contract with the British government

Ah, just good old fashioned grift. Nothing to be concerned about. The money is being spent on executive bonuses and government official kickbacks, not developing facial recognition.

2OEH8eoCRo0• 3 years ago

I despise IBM but how is that grift?

HtmlProgrammer2• 3 years ago

$(£?)70 mil contract with IBM with a government agency will get you some serious consultancy fees

Source: father works for government and sees budgets for how much is wasted on IBM doing fuck all for the money

w0m• 3 years ago

a joke about UK govt wasting money

cjbgkagh4• 3 years ago

The UK routinely buys software that doesn’t work for large amounts of money. The only reasonable explanation is corruption.

goodbyesf• 3 years ago

Who the hell is signing a large contract with IBM and expecting them to deliver working tech?

Considering they have tens of billions in revenue every year, a lot of people. But what's IBM's niche? I remember they promoted watson a few years back and nothing seems to have come out of that. IBM is such an iconic name in tech but I don't remember them doing anything noteworthy for a long time. At this point IBM is just famous for being famous.

mistrial92• 3 years ago

watsonx.ai where have you been !

thrashh• 3 years ago

Afaik a ton of companies use Watson.

IBM doesn’t market services… they market solutions. You contract with them and they figure out how they build something for you. And it may include Watson.

hanniabu• 3 years ago

How is that a grift? They'll get like 3 meetings with that contract!

pyrophane• 3 years ago

I think the reason for this is probably more:

1. Risk aversion. "Nobody gets fire for buying IBM" still has some truth to it. Even if they don't deliver, the fact that IBM is one of (or the?) largest consulting firms in the world is in itself a defense for selecting them.

2. The government bid process. I don't know how this works in the UK, but in the US you have to jump through a lot of hoops if you want to work on government contract, so the same few firms tend to get selected a lot not because they are good, but because they know how to work the process.

geodel• 3 years ago

At lower level nowadays I see no one gets hired if they are still working on IBM products.

namdnay• 3 years ago

IBM are just a big body shop contracting firm, like Accenture or Cap Gemini . I don’t think they’re any better or worse than the others

renegade-otter• 3 years ago

No one ever gets fired for choosing IBM - the results do not matter.

rmah• 3 years ago

$70 mil is not what IBM would consider a large contract. Certainly not large enough to risk actions like kickbacks. Now if it was $700mil, then maybe.

datadrivenangel• 3 years ago

Classic IBM. Principles are cheap unless you pay for them.

RcouF1uZ4gsC• 3 years ago

Actually this is a good thing.

Knowing IBM’s consultancy track record, this will serve as a money and time honeytrap for any government interested in this while not actually delivering any useable tech.

pizzaknife• 3 years ago

as an eternal optimist, i hope this is how it shakes out

nijave• 3 years ago

Probably by backing off they meant they just re-orged and fired a few people in that department

supermatt• 3 years ago

  “IBM firmly opposes and will not condone uses of any technology, including facial recognition technology offered by other vendors…”

They didn’t feel the need to “include” themselves in their definition of “any”

willcipriano• 3 years ago

IBM's solutions are so ancient they are no longer considered technology.

wredue2• 3 years ago

IBM severed most of their ancient technology off in to Kyndryl. They’re pretty much all cloud at this point.

MaxikCZ2• 3 years ago

I dont know. My close relative works as infrastructure engineer at major automotive company, and about every 2 years they are buying new computation clusters (think tens to low hundreds thousands of cores, along with network and storage infra). Every time a public tender is held, and every time there are several companies promising to achieve required results with whatever hardware.

Last decade I know of three different firms being selected, where they guaranteed to succeed on speed requirements (some even saying its tested inhouse), only to admit failure after year of trying, taking all their hardware back with no pay. IBM at higher price was selected as backup, and every time was the only firm actually able to deliver on their promises and meet the benchmark requirements.

I often see IBM getting a lot of flak here for whatever reasons, just sharing some counterweight.

unnah• 3 years ago

Maybe they caught on with all the youngsters who call software and AI stuff "tech" instead of technology, and make a clear distinction between the two.

_zoltan_• 3 years ago

Quantum computers, cutting edge crypto, cutting edge physical reseach just to name a few? I think we are pretty much at the forefront of a lot of things.

disclaimer: I work at IBM Research but this is my own opinion.

wnc3141• 3 years ago

What is IBM's competitive position? I always assumed they were in the assurance business. I.e. they have well tested systems with close support. Anyone with more insight?

tempodox• 3 years ago

If a pittance of $70M makes IBM go back on their word, they must really be on their last legs.

pc86• 3 years ago

I'll do it for 10¢ on the dollar.

MrQuincle• 3 years ago

If this article is concerned about ethics at IBM https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust might be an interesting read for people who haven't yet.

opless• 3 years ago

I came to post the same thing.

stonogo3• 3 years ago

How many of those people still work at IBM, do you suppose?

EGreg• 3 years ago

Don’t trust Corporations in the capitalist system. Happens every day.

OpenAI saying they will keep your private data safe from being used for training? I am wondering what the story will be in 5 years hehe

jmclnx• 3 years ago

Funny, some people in the Arab world are fighting required Hijab use. In the US and Europe, with this happening, I could see many people outside wearing Hijabs that cover your full face in the future.

n1b0m3• 3 years ago

If you’re referring to Iran then they’re Persian not Arab.

_lvbh• 3 years ago

The Arab world refers to the Islamic countries in the Middle East I believe. Not any specific country

popcalc• 3 years ago

many people outside wearing Hijabs that cover your full face in the future

I'd assume they would be seen as a freak by the average person, in the same way people under the age of 60 who don't own a smartphone are today.

cpeterso• 3 years ago

COVID-19 made wearing face masks normal. No one needs to know if you’re wearing a mask to protect against COVID or to protect your privacy.

WeylandYutani• 3 years ago

In my country it is actually illegal to cover your face. There was a substantial backlash on Islam.

https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/gezichtsbedekkende-...

0xDEF• 3 years ago

It's peak techbro delusion to think the rest of the population care that much about privacy.

I wish I was wrong.

rqtwteye2• 3 years ago

When will people learn that companies will almost always sell stuff as long as it’s legal and profitable. They have no morals. If we declined into a dictatorship they would sell equipment for total surveillance and oppression. If we don’t make it illegal to pollute they will pollute if they think it makes money.

quacked2• 3 years ago

I believe people should take care to add "men and women at" before talking about companies. Companies and corporations are abstractions. There are real people taking these actions.

- "Men and women at IBM promised to back off facial recognition, then signed a $70M contract for it"

- "Men and women would sell equipment for total surveillance and oppression"

etc.

The reason I think this is important is that there's actually a very small number of people relative to the general population that are capable of producing this technology. It's easy to be angry at the suits, or at the broad abstraction "IBM" for enabling this, but the fact of the matter is that there are spineless cowards out there getting up every morning to go and build facial recognition software. They deserve the ire of thinking people. No matter what the era is, there will be sociopaths running large organizations looking to control everyone, but these days there's a huge coterie of nerds getting paid handsomely to help.

Retric• 3 years ago

I think you’re vastly underestimating how many people can figure it out with a little research and on the job training. The basic government consulting model is to take fresh collage grads and have them muddle through. And while yes it’s a horrific waste of taxpayer money, it also works surprisingly often.

toyg2• 3 years ago

spineless cowards

It's hard to be brave when you have to support a family, pay for a mortgage, pay for the kids' college, etc.

I remember feeling queasy, almost 20 years ago, when I got hired for a very good salary to do helpdesk, and realized the customers I had to support included some Bad Actors: big mining, big arm manufacturing, even big spying... but I could finally afford to buy a small house, marry my partner, and start a family. So I sucked it up, and without that experience I wouldn't be where I am now.

4ggr0• 3 years ago

Or to avoid using the gender binary we could just use "People/Humans at IBM" :)

Agree otherwise.

bo1024• 3 years ago

Point taken, but an important point here is exactly that companies are abstractions, and they exhibit emergent behavior -- cases where the the company as a whole, responding to "its" incentives, "does" things that no individual at the company would necessarily do or even condone if it were all up to them.

nonrandomstring• 3 years ago

You are right. This was settled with the Nuremberg principles and code in the wake of the last world war. Group apologetics are cowardly and unacceptable. People of excellent character, some of them genuine leaders, step up and accept responsibility for the moral failures of organisations they head. Those "merely following orders" deserve no protection.

We must stop blaming "the system", or "inevitable progress", or "capitalism", or whatever abstraction. It is terribly weak and avoidant to do so. It seems perfectly fair to put names to actions having broad effect. I think the (as you say) _few_ people who make far reaching decisions in technology deserve treating as de-facto public figures, as worthy of public scrutiny as political representatives.

Want to "invent" some disruptive new technology that changes the world? At least have the decency to put your name to it, stand by it and defend it ethically. Otherwise what you're doing looks more like terrorism than science.

Actual individual _people_ make awful decisions, knowing that they are awful, and hoping to get away with it through "safety in numbers". We should welcome whatever puts moral pressure on such individuals to act properly, and not to hide behind their "gang". Corporations have become a rock beneath which rather little sunlight shines nowdays.

rqtwteye2• 3 years ago

“there are spineless cowards out there getting up every morning to go and build facial recognition software.”

Almost any technology can be abused. There are a lot of good uses for facial recognition and also a lot of bad. I don’t think the people who develop technology are responsible of cowards for how it’s being used. That’s up to the big guys. If you want to work on stuff that’s for sure only used for “good” purposes, your world will be very small.

FridgeSeal• 3 years ago

I don’t believe that treating these orgs with kid-gloves solves anything and in fact only serves to perpetuate the ineffective repercussions leveraged against organisations that do the wrong thing.

“Oh no they’re just people, let’s be nice”: ok if they’re just people then they can hear the responsibility and the blame. They did the wrong thing and deserve the shame that comes with that. If we’re expected to remember the humans in the org, then the humans don’t get to hide behind nebulous, faceless, corporate veils.

oaththrowaway• 3 years ago

IBM already helped the Nazis in the Holocaust. They never had morals to start with. If we elected Hitler's reanimated corpse, IBM would gladly help again

snarf21• 3 years ago

Upton Sinclair — 'It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.'

mushbino• 3 years ago

Capitalism in a nutshell. It will always do this. It can't be reformed. Aside from the fact that we will eventually run out of resources to exploit. Infinite growth is just not possible.

wredue2• 3 years ago

They actually don’t even care if it’s illegal.

Businesses straight up killed a reporter with a car bomb a few years back. They don’t give a fuck.

How many companies blatantly break the law only to pull some accounting magic to entirely avoid consequences (Canada oil is legally required to clean up their mess, but never do. It always falls to the taxpayer with zero business consequence).

How many times to they break the law, only to get a small slap on the wrist while running away with billions in profit?

Companies don’t give a shit if something is illegal.

berniedurfee2• 3 years ago

I’d be mad rich if not for my stinkin’ conscience. Doing evil is where all the money is, always has been. I need a pill so I can quite my conscience and get on with getting rich.

Nature knows no morals, so I guess acting without morals is a more natural state, thus provides fewer constraints.

Morals and ethics are purely human constructs, thus to follow your conscience is to be more human and less inhumane. That makes me feel good. Maybe we need a pill to improve one’s ability to hear their conscience.

adolph• 3 years ago

It is foolish to think that an assertion without an incentivizing contract is anything other than marketing. What, is a public corporation going to turn down 70M because of something a leader said when it was popular? They have legal fiduciary obligations against not making money, not against changing directions.

Even at the granularity of individual humans, what people want to do is largely orthogonal to what they do. In James Clear's book Atomic Habits one of the more hard-core ways of pre-committing to a course of action is to write a contract with an "accountability partner."

Below is a sample:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/jamesclear/Atomic+Habits/Habit+Cont...

say_it_as_it_is• 3 years ago

"IBM CEO Arvind Krishna announced a hiring pause in May, but that’s not all. Later that month, the CEO also stated the company plans to replace nearly 8,000 jobs with AI.

Krishna noted that back-office functions, specifically in the human resources (HR) sector, will be the first to face these changes. In recent weeks, the company has opened up dozens of positions for AI-based roles to help develop and maintain these systems."

The mask has fallen.

darkerside• 3 years ago

Well in their defense, when they said that they didn't know they could make $70M on it

NikkiA• 3 years ago

Would expect no better from the company that unabashedly profited from the holocaust and south africa's apartheid.

IBM promised to back off facial recognition, then signed a $70M contract for it

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