Its use has become increasingly controversial due to privacy concerns and issues of bias. Now, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said in a letter to Congress that his company "no longer offers general purpose IBM facial recognition or analysis software." He continued, "IBM firmly opposes and will not condone uses of any technology, including facial recognition technology offered by other vendors, for mass surveillance, racial profiling, violations of basic human rights and freedoms." We'll see how other business leaders and politicians respond, and whether this represents any kind of turning point in the deployment of facial recognition. After postponing its showcase last week amid widespread anti-racism protests, Sony will debut its PlayStation 5 showcase on Thursday afternoon. The company is apparently planning to show off about an hour's worth of next-gen games, although whether or not we'll see the system itself is unknown.

IBM's chief executive officer Arvind Krishna today revealed that the company is sunsetting its "general-purpose" facial recognition business. The announcement was revealed in Krishna's letter to members of Congress Monday about racial justice reform. The letter included suggestions for legislation around police reform and the responsible use of technology, such as artificial intelligence, a tool often used in facial recognition and other surveillance software. Krishna wrote that IBM "firmly opposes" the use of "any technology, including facial recognition technology offered by other vendors, for mass surveillance, racial profiling, violations of basic human rights and freedoms." He asked for a "national dialogue" on how facial recognition should be used, if at all.

Apple's Siri and Google's voice assistant have both been updated to respond to questions about Black Lives Matter, and rebuff the sentiment behind the response "All Lives Matter." As spotted by sports blogger David Gardner, when asked "Do black lives matter?", Google's Assistant will respond: "Black Lives Matter. Black people deserve the same freedoms afforded to everyone in this country, and recognising the injustice they face is the first step towards fixing it." When asked "Do all lives matter", the Assistant will respond: "Saying'Black Lives Matter' doesn't mean that all lives don't. It means Black lives are at risk in ways others are not."

Law enforcement has used surveillance technology to monitor participants of the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests, as it has with many other protests in US history. License plate readers, facial recognition, and wireless text message interception are just some of the tools at its disposal. While none of this is new, the exposure that domestic surveillance is getting in this moment is further exposing a great fallacy among policymakers. All too often, there is a tendency among the policy community, particularly for those whose work involves national security, to discuss democratic tech regulation purely in terms of geopolitical competition. There are arguments that regulating big tech is vital to national security.

The backlash to facial recognition among governments is extending to corporate heavyweights. IBM chief Arvind Krishna has sent a letter (via Axios and CNBC) to Congress revealing that the company has exited its "general purpose" facial recognition business. The company "firmly opposes" use of the technology for surveillance, racial profiling and "violations of basic human rights and freedoms," according to Krishna. Instead, he suggested that now was the moment for a "national dialogue" on not only how facial recognition should be used, but whether or not it should be used at all. The CEO contended that AI was a "powerful tool" for law enforcement, but that its use had to be kept in check with audited tests for bias.

A group of anonymous Walmart workers have raised concerns about the anti-shoplifting technology used to monitor the company's self-checkout kiosks. A group that calls themselves'Concerned Home Office Associates' has circulated a video documenting the system's flaws, including frequent failures to identify unscanned items, and incorrectly identifying personal items potentially shoplifted. In an email sent to company management at Walmart's headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, the group claims to be'past their breaking point,' saying the system's frequent false positives are irritating customers and putting workers at greater risk of COVID-19 exposure by unnecessarily having to verify customer's purchases at unsafe distances. An anonymous group of Walmart employees have raised concerns about anti-theft technology used at self-checkout kiosks, saying it's'a fake AI that just pretends to safeguard' 'It's like a noisy tech, a fake AI that just pretends to safeguard,' one of the Walmart employees, who asked to remain anonymous, told Wired. The system was originally designed by Everseen--an artificial intelligence and technology firm based in Cork, Ireland--and relies on overhead cameras, or'digital eyes,' that film customers as they scan objects into the register.

When you hear the word "automation...", does your mind skip straight to "…destroys jobs"? If so, there should be a few stops in between. Automation is about removing friction, driving down costs, speeding processes up, and generally improving efficiency. Making goods and services better and cheaper is a good thing: it makes us all richer. There is scope to do this in all walks of life, and not least in professional services, such as accountancy and the law.

Companies have considered adoption of various high-level artificial intelligence (AI) principles for responsible AI, but there is less clarity on how to implement these principles as organizational practices. This paper reviews the principles-to-practices gap. We outline five explanations for this gap ranging from a disciplinary divide to an overabundance of tools. In turn, we argue that an impact assessment framework which is broad, operationalizable, flexible, iterative, guided, and participatory is a promising approach to close the principles-to-practices gap. Finally, to help practitioners with applying these recommendations, we review a case study of AI's use in forest ecosystem restoration, demonstrating how an impact assessment framework can translate into effective and responsible AI practices.

Sometimes the capturing of an image or a single video can have a transformative effect. George Floyd's killing is an example. The eight-minute, 46-second video speaks for itself. That is why it sent so many Americans onto the streets. And anyone contending with state violence, whether they are in Minneapolis, Hong Kong or the Middle East, knows that sometimes all they need to prove their point - to expose illegality - is the right picture.

The World Post Pandemic: How surveillance and weapon systems, used unwisely, can harm humanity! Mark Twain once wrote "against the assault of laughter nothing can stand." Ethics In Technology is planning to put Mark Twain's statement to the test about the military-industrial complex and the surveillance state. Join us for a night of thought-provoking presentations followed by some wonderful comedy. The show is hosted by nonprofit organization Ethics in Technology, a nonprofit watchdog group advocating for a world where big tech firms and technology work to serve humanity and the planet, rather than the other way around.