Miss a day, miss a lot. Subscribe to The Defender's Top News of the Day. It's free.
Facial Recognition Is Expanding Its Watchful Eye but Suffers From Notable Fails
The use of facial recognition technology, a form of biometric artificial intelligence, is growing across the U.S. as an efficient security system that can identify people based on measuring facial features but has been hit with some notable criticisms.
Today, machine learning algorithms — a subset of artificial intelligence that uses data and algorithms to mimic how humans learn — have fine-tuned the technology. The tech can measure and identify facial measurements in a photo or video, and cross-analyze whether two photos or videos show the same person, or even pick a person out in a crowd of people, Amazon Web Services explains.
The tech is being used to patrol for fraud, where some companies have users verify their identity with their face, to ATMs using the tech to authenticate customers or even for doctors accessing patient records. While a New York City supermarket rolled out the tech to patrol for shoplifters, and Madison Square Garden Entertainment has used the recognition software to identify and boot event-goers from venues such as Radio City or Madison Square Garden.
For police departments, the use of the tech is widespread, with the CEO of facial recognition firm Clearview AI telling the BBC last month that police departments in the U.S. have used its software nearly 1 million times. Facial recognition technology, however, has come under scrutiny by some local leaders and civil liberties groups with accusations it violates people’s privacy and civil liberties.
TikTok’s Algorithm Keeps Pushing Suicide to Vulnerable Kids
TikTok’s algorithm doesn’t know Chase Nasca is dead. More than a year after Nasca killed himself at age 16, his account remains active. Scroll through his For You feed, and you see an endless stream of clips about unrequited love, hopelessness, pain and what many posts glorify as the ultimate escape: suicide.
Two weeks after his death, his mother, Michelle, started searching his social media accounts, desperate for answers. When she opened the TikTok app on his iPad, she found a library of more than 3,000 videos her son had bookmarked, liked, saved or tagged as a favorite. She could see the terms he’d searched for: Batman, basketball, weightlifting, motivational speeches. And she could see what the algorithm had brought him: many videos about depression, hopelessness and death.
At a congressional hearing in March, a representative brought up Nasca’s death, showing TikTok Chief Executive Officer Shou Chew some of the clips the app had sent the boy and asking if Chew would let his own children watch such content. That same month, Nasca’s parents filed a wrongful death lawsuit in New York state court against TikTok, ByteDance and the railroad.
TikTok’s original recommendation algorithm was designed by a team of engineers in China, working for ByteDance. But while the app was made in China, it’s used most everywhere except China. It can’t even be downloaded in its homeland. TikTok says its algorithm is now maintained by engineers around the world, with teams based in North America, Europe and Asia contributing. But more than a dozen former employees from the company’s trust and safety team who were interviewed by Bloomberg Businessweek say executives and engineers in Beijing still hold the keys.
CDC Director Walensky Says Vaccines Don’t Stop Transmission. Why Does Maine Still Mandate the Shot for Healthcare Workers?
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky testified in Congress Wednesday that the mRNA injections marketed as COVID-19 vaccines do not stop the spread of the virus. Walensky’s comments contradict repeated claims during the pandemic that urged people to get the vaccines because doing so would reduce transmission of the virus.
On Wednesday, she claimed those previous statements were true at the time, but since then, there has been an “evolution of the science” and now the vaccine no longer stops transmission.
While there may have been an “evolution of the science,” there has not been an “evolution of the policy,” especially when it comes to the Mills Administration’s mandate that healthcare workers receive the vaccine. Whether or not the vaccines stop or slow the transmission of the virus is central to the controversial mandate policies.
In Maine, Gov. Janet Mills enacted one of the harshest vaccine mandates in the country against healthcare workers. The mandate does not include philosophical or religious exemptions. As a result of the mandate, thousands of healthcare workers have left the field — or the state — creating a worker shortage for hospitals and emergency service providers.
Yet Maine’s vaccine mandate for all healthcare workers remains in effect despite the highest-ranking official in American disease prevention admitting Wednesday that those mandates were enacted on false premises.
City Went Too Far in Worker Crackdown Over COVID Vaccines, Judge Rules
Unionized City of Chicago employees fired or disciplined for violating COVID-19 vaccination requirements must be reinstated and repaid for any loss of wages or benefits, a state hearing officer has ruled.
The decision in a case before the Illinois Labor Relations Board applies to city workers represented by trade unions or by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The unions banded together to challenge regulations Mayor Lori Lightfoot imposed starting in 2021.
Administrative Law Judge Anna Hamburg-Gal said the city violated the Illinois Public Labor Relations Act by not bargaining in good faith over vaccine requirements and changes in sick leave policies. Her ruling, issued Wednesday, requires the city to “make whole” workers who lost pay and benefits, plus 7% annual interest.
The ruling is a broad rebuke of Lightfoot’s get-tough policies on city workers who resisted vaccine mandates, but it’s not known how many employees were penalized. One source said a few dozen employees may be directly affected by the decision.
U.S. Homeland Security Chief Creating Artificial Intelligence Task Force
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Friday that the agency would create a task force to figure out how to use artificial intelligence to do everything from protecting critical infrastructure to screening cargo to ferreting out products made with slave labor.
While artificial intelligence isn’t new, the sudden popularity of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in recent months has sent officials around the world scrambling to see how they can best use the technology for good and prevent it from turbocharging disinformation and criminal activity.
Mayorkas said the technology would “drastically alter the threat landscape,” adding: “Our department will lead in the responsible use of AI to secure the homeland and in defending against the malicious use of this transformational technology.”
Consumer Protection Bureau Staffer Sent 256,000 People’s Data to Personal Account
A former employee of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, also known as the CFPB, sent personal data for hundreds of thousands of people to a personal email account, the agency confirmed this week.
The since-dismissed staffer for the agency, which is responsible for protecting consumers in the financial sector, made an unauthorized transfer of records for 256,000 customers of an unnamed financial institution, as well as confidential information for 45 other institutions, an agency spokesperson confirmed with The Wall Street Journal. The spokesperson clarified that most of the records were linked to consumers at one institution, although personal data from consumers from seven other unnamed firms were implicated.
CFPB officials informed the House Financial Services Committee about the “major incident” on March 21, according to a letter that Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Bill Huizenga (R-MI) sent the agency. The lawmaker said the transfer, which occurred through 65 emails, contained attachments, names, and account numbers for the 256,000 individuals.
TikTok’s CEO Breaks Silence After Brutal Congressional Hearing
On Thursday, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew give his first interview since sparring with House lawmakers in a testy hearing back in March. Chew is one of dozens of business leaders speaking at the TED2023 “Possibility” conference held in Vancouver, Canada. In a softball discussion that saw the interviewer praising Chew and asking for a selfie, the embattled CEO reiterated the ways TikTok is addressing public criticisms and explained why his app is good for America and the world.
Chew’s brief interview marks his first major public appearance since a five-hour-long, mostly-bad-faith grilling from lawmakers sitting on the House Energy and Commerce Committee in March. When Chew could (occasionally) get a word in, he tried to paint a picture of TikTok as a safe, “sunny corner of the internet” used by some 150 million Americans, close to half of the country, according to the company.
Lawmakers from both sides of the political aisle were unconvinced. Instead, many railed against TikTok for allegedly catalyzing harmful misinformation and dangerous health trends while another more raucous cohort demanded Chew prove TikTok couldn’t be used by the Chinese government as a surveillance tool. Exasperated, Chew told one lawmaker he felt like he was being faced with the impossible task of proving a negative.
As Japan’s Population Drops, One City Is Turning to ChatGPT to Help Run the Government
In the five months since its launch, ChatGPT has been used to generate student essays, write wedding vows and compose rousing sermons for pastors and rabbis. Now, a Japanese city is turning to the AI chatbot for something else: helping to run the government.
Yokosuka City, in Japan’s central Kanagawa prefecture, announced this week that it will begin using ChatGPT to help with administrative tasks. A news release on the municipal government’s website said all employees could use the chatbot to “summarize sentences, check spelling errors and create ideas.”
With ChatGPT handling rote administrative tasks, “staff can focus on work that can only be done by people, pushing forward an approach that brings happiness for our citizens,” said the news release.
But not every government has been as welcoming to ChatGPT. There have been widespread data privacy concerns, prompting Italian regulators to issue a temporary ban on the chatbot last month as they investigate how its parent company uses data.
