A company which enables its clients to search a database of billions of images scraped from the internet for matches to a particular face has won an appeal against the UK’s privacy watchdog.
Clearview AI offers its clients a system that works like a search engine for faces - users upload a photo and it finds matches in a database of billions of images it has collected.
In March, Clearview’s founder Hoan Ton-That told the BBC it had run nearly a million searches for US police, helping them to solve a range of crimes, including murders.
In the past Clearview AI had commercial customers, but since a 2020 settlement in a case brought by US civil liberties campaigners, the firm now only accepts clients who carry out criminal law enforcement or national security functions.
Clearview does not have UK or EU clients, but its customers are based in the US and in other countries including Panama, Brazil, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic, Tuesday’s judgement revealed.
“The appeal turned exclusively on the fact that Clearview’s customers were overseas national security and law enforcement bodies, and so shouldn’t be relied on as granting a blanket permission for such scraping activities more generally.”
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although Clearview did carry out data processing related to monitoring the behaviour of people in the UK, the ICO “did not have jurisdiction” to take enforcement action or issue a fine.
So one of the world’s worst data privacy pigs has found a legal loophole. But that does not justify their actions.
It simply shows how much these laws still need to be improved.
Amazon is trialling humanoid robots in its US warehouses, in the latest sign of the tech giant automating more of its operations.
It said it was testing a new robot called Digit, which has arms and legs and can move, grasp and handle items in a similar fashion to a human.
We’ve already seen hundreds of jobs disappear to it in fulfilment centres," said Stuart Richards, an organiser at UK trade union GMB.
As the announcement was made, Amazon said its robotics systems had in fact helped create “hundred of thousands of new jobs” within its operations.
Amazon Robotics’ chief technologist, Tye Brady, told reporters at a media briefing in Seattle that people were “irreplaceable”, and disputed the suggestion that the company could have fully-automated warehouses in the future.
Scott Dresser of Amazon Robotics told the BBC this allowed it to “deal with steps and stairs or places in our facility where we need to move up and down”.
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I disagree. They used what they had and were certainly researching continual improvement all along. They’ve had automation wherever they could implement it all over.
The challenge is finding the right human teams to design the automation that will be successful. Engineers with a background in practical robotic automation are not exactly common.
Every major company is in a race to reduce wage cost to 0 and maximize growth and p/e. For amazon their growth and revenue numbers kept growing despite offering above market for unskilled labor, albiet for horrible jobs. They’ll continue to try and eliminate as many FTEs as they can until all they employ are people who manage, deploy, maintain, design and implement automatic systems.
There’s a reason why they have outsourced delivery: Nobody has tackled automated driving and delivery services yet. Plenty of companies have highly automated warehousing.
I don’t think many of them even realize what they’re doing. I’m not sure any billionaires truly realize how divorced from reality their little bubble is. It’s the only conclusion I can come to. They legit think all these streaming services are affordable, they legit think houses are affordable still, they think “freeing them up” from employment will make their (ex-)employees happier because they don’t have to work anymore or something. It’s the only thing I can think when I look at just how many outrageously wealthy people would have to be truly evil for this system to turn out the way it is. The only conclusion I can think of is that, for the most part, they’re normal people who got super lucky and are so divorced from reality they don’t realize how hard they’re fucking the system over.
I’m commenting on the part about “freeing up employees” as if they’ll be able to live without a job once their role is replaced and becomes redundant. Robots are cool. Robots should be doing warehouse jobs. I was simply commenting on the choice of words.
That line is about freeing up employee hours to do other tasks
Shitloads of people in manufacturing, service, and distribution will be losing their jobs in the next decade or so as a result of automation. I just don’t think that’s a bad thing.
Soft plug for Cyberpunk 2077 and Blade Runner if you want to see how that happens.
Except reality would be far more soul-crushing, most people wouldn't have autonomy or success that make for interesting stories. Most people would just have the choice to live in a company office, die to corporate police, or become cyberhomeless.
Oh yea I know it, had it worded as 'company megacity' at one point but didn't want to sound anti-city.
That and even if they don't own the city, it can be a detriment especially looking at new technological ways they could control workers even without physical isolation. And I'm sure they could use this power to exploit a greater number of people, too.
Won’t someone think of the poor 19th century English textile workers! That group still has no jobs today and worldwide quality of life is clearly so much worse for it!
What’s really interesting here is that the company that makes the Digit robots, Agility Robotics, uses them in their own factories. Just a really brilliant proof-of-concept.
Automation is always a good thing and we should encourage it as much as possible.
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