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Rep. Tlaib Calls out Kroger for Facial Recognition Practices
Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., is sounding the alarm about Kroger using facial recognition technology.
The grocery chain says it uses the technology to determine gender and age to present targeted ads on its digital price tags that it rolled out five years ago. Tlaib is accusing Kroger of using facial recognition to price gouge, but Kroger says its “digital price tags” will bring down prices.
The grocery chain also said its facial recognition practices will allow it to promote more personalized offerings and improve safety.
The Michigan Democratic congresswoman, however, says she’s concerned that facial recognition could be discriminatory and says it shouldn’t be used at grocery stores.
According to a 2021 study commissioned by Sephora, 3 in 5 shoppers claimed to have experienced discriminatory treatment in a retail setting. Another 2 in 5 shoppers said they experienced unfair treatment based on their race or skin color.
There’s Never Been a Better Time to Delete Your 23andMe Data. Here’s How to Do It
23andMe, the well-known genomics company, has been in a downward spiral ever since it suffered a fairly catastrophic data breach last year. Understandably, people want to delete their accounts and purge whatever data the company has on them.
Unfortunately, 23andMe isn’t really going to delete all of your data.
Oh, sure, you can delete your account. There is a tutorial on the company’s website explaining how to do it. However, MIT Technology Review reports that, while the company will technically erase your account, it plans to hang onto a chunk of the information associated with it. For instance, if you’ve previously consented to sharing your anonymized genetic data with third parties, there’s no way for you to delete that information.
At the same time, the company will also retain a vague amount of your genetic information, as well as information about your sex, birthday, email address, and details about your account deletion request, MIT writes. According to 23andMe’s privacy policy, it retains your genetic and birthday information to fulfill regulatory requirements.
In short, the company will maintain evidence that your account existed, along with easily identifiable information (your DOB), your email contact, and, again, some amount of your genetic information.
If you would like to delete your account, you can do it through your Account Settings tab. Some identity verification may be necessary for you to complete this stage of the deletion request. You’ll get an email from the company asking for a confirmation that you want to delete your account.
TSA Begins Use of ‘Facial Match’ Technology at Sea-Tac Airport Checkpoints
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is rolling out new technology at its checkpoints at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport that will use facial matching technology to verify the identity of travelers.
The TSA checkpoint stands are being upgraded with cameras that snap a photo of the traveler and then match it to their identification. The new process will eliminate the need to scan a boarding pass before being admitted into the screening area.
“What I’ve seen is anytime the traveler has to do less, the faster it is,” said TSA spokesperson Lorie Dankers.
Dankers gave a demonstration of the second generation “Credential Authentication Technology” terminals to the media on Wednesday.
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ChatGPT Is Judging You Based on Your Name, and Here’s What You Can Do About It
A new study by OpenAI has identified that ChatGPT-4o does give different responses based on your name in a very small number of situations.
Developing an artificial intelligence, or AI isn’t a simple programming job where you can set a number of rules, effectively telling the LLM what to say. An LLM (the large language model on which a chatbot like ChatGPT is based) needs to be trained on huge amounts of data, from which it can identify patterns and start to learn.
Of course, that data comes from the real world, so it often is full of human biases including gender and racial stereotypes. The more training you can do on your LLM the more you can weed out these stereotypes and biases, and also reduce harmful outputs, but it would be very hard to remove them completely.
Writing about the study (called First-Person Fairness in Chatbots), OpenAI explains, “In this study, we explored how subtle cues about a user’s identity — like their name — can influence ChatGPT‘s responses.” It’s interesting to investigate if an LLM like ChatGPT treats you differently if it perceives you as a male or female, especially since you need to tell it your name for some applications.
