Tech Giants Back Off Selling Facial Recognition AI to Police - InformationWeek

Artificial intelligence technologies offer a lot of potential to improve the world. Simulations could speed up disease and drug research, autonomous vehicles could cut energy use and its impact on the environment, and facial recognition could help quickly identify missing children. But there's a flip side to the good, and some major technology companies acknowledged the potential issues with facial recognition software last week, with IBM halting development while Amazon and Microsoft pledged to not sell the technology to the police for a set period of time. The moves come in the wake of incidents of police violence at widespread protests across the country in response to the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis in May. Privacy advocates have opposed the use of facial recognition software for years, saying it could be abused by the government to surveille and harass citizens.