Miriam Meckel is a German publicist and entrepreneur. She is co-founder and CEO of ada Learning GmbH. She also teaches as a professor for communication management at the University of St. Gallen.
(Photo: Klawe Rzeczy)
In the shadow of existential fears, small threats can become great without being seen. This also applies to the irrational fear that artificial intelligence could become smarter than we ourselves and will keep humans as pets in the future.
“Those who are afraid of artificial general intelligence do not pay attention to the things that are really happening,” said tech investor Peter Thiel a few days ago at a conference in Miami. What is really going on right now? A comprehensive technological capture of humanity using facial recognition technologies. Thiel describes them as “communist totalitarian technologies”.
Peter Thiel is a problematic, even bigoted, witness to the charge against humanity of looking for dangers in the wrong corners of our AI future. It’s not just his sometimes strange attitudes towards democracy or women that make you wonder.
Above all, Thiel is involved in Palantir and Clearview AI – two technology companies that also work with or develop these facial analysis systems. He’s also nowhere near the first technology insider to issue this warning. And yet he is right.
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Clearview AI, hailing itself as the world’s largest face recognition network, searches the Internet for the human face and has built a database of three billion faces. If you load a photo into the Clearview app, it delivers all the images that the algorithm can find for this person on the Internet plus the corresponding Internet addresses. The app not only works with the typical ID photos, but also with private snapshots from social media.
In fact, you can find anyone whose face has appeared on the Internet with Clearview. A number of law enforcement agencies in the United States are now using Clearview AI technology. In Canada, however, the app is banned.
How China is building the perfect surveillance system
Two other important start-up companies are based in China: Megvii Technology and SenseTime – both also specialize in facial recognition and are heavily funded by Beijing. You are part of a nationwide network of technology companies that use AI-supported image recognition to build a perfect and seamless surveillance system. SenseTime works closely with the Chinese police and has long been involved in a company that implements the technological surveillance of the Uyghur minority in Xinjiang.
A capitalist, an authoritarian country – and a technology that can find and track everyone, regardless of place, time and political framework, using the unique features of the face. That doesn’t just sound dystopian. This development has the potential to change our world forever.
Against this background, it is not surprising that international experts have been exchanging blows for some time over the question of who will win the race in AI: the USA or China? The dispute got a particularly pleasant note when the first and now former Chief Software Officer of the US Air Force said in an interview: “In fifteen to twenty years we will no longer have a chance against China.” He described his own US authorities as “kindergarten level”.
As a result, numerous important voices immediately spoke up to refute the devastating judgment. China wants to become the world market leader in artificial intelligence by 2030, heads the list of scientific citations in the field, the state is pumping hundreds of billions into technological development – but: China’s excellence only concerns image and pattern recognition. In all more complex technologies, the US is ahead.
Convenience beats privacy – face recognition is making its way everywhere
That may be so. But the comparison lags at the pace of a war-disabled doomed on the way to the future. It doesn’t need complicated technology in order to be different from what one would wish for in a free and democratic world. Today’s standards of face recognition are sufficient for this. Because they are diligently exported all over the world by China and its tech companies. There they may not be used to consistently monitor the population and punish them in a draconian way. They are used for access to the workplace, contact-free payment, security control at the airport – everything is very convenient and, especially in times of Covid, good for health care. But where is the democracy care?
Convenience beats privacy, this is a well-known pattern of exchange in the digital world. After that, face recognition will find its way everywhere. China only exports technological applications, the systemic embedding follows. Follow the technology and you will understand which country you will live in.
The other day I got on a plane at JFK Airport in New York. I no longer needed a passport or boarding pass, boarding was via facial recognition. It was practical and quick. By the way, no Air China or United Airlines plane. It was Lufthansa.
In this column Miriam Meckel writes fortnightly about ideas, innovations and interpretations that make progress and a better life possible. Because what the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the rest of the world calls a butterfly. ada-magazin.com
More: Ministry of Justice calls for “red lines” when using artificial intelligence.