IBM announces withdrawal from the face recognition market, 'concerns that technology promotes discrimination and inequality'

by Steven Lilley

IBM has announced its concern that technology is being used to promote discrimination and racial inequality, and has announced plans to exit the market for general-purpose facial recognition technology.

IBM CEO's Letter to Congress on Racial Justice Reform-THINKPolicy Blog
https://www.ibm.com/blogs/policy/facial-recognition-susset-racial-justice-reforms/

IBM to withdraw from the facial recognition market out of profiling fears-CNET
https://www.cnet.com/news/ibm-to-withdraw-from-the-facial-recognition-market/

IBM gets out of facial recognition business, calls on Congress to advance policies tackling racial injustice
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/08/ibm-gets-out-of-facial-recognition-business-calls-on-congress-to-advance-policies-tackling-racial-injustice.html

On June 8, 2020, IBM announced the 'IBM CEO Letter to Congress on Racial Equality Reform'. Among them, IBM CEO Albind Krishna said, 'For the purposes of large-scale oversight and facial profiling , violations of fundamental human rights and freedoms, or for purposes that do not fit our values and the principles of trust and transparency. , And firmly opposes the use of any technology, including facial recognition technology provided by other vendors, and will not tolerate this.'

'We think it's time to start a nationwide conversation about whether and how face recognition technology should be adopted by national law enforcement agencies,' IBM said. I am.

IBM announced that it will withdraw from the face recognition market on May 25, 2020 when a black man was suffocated by a white police officer and suffocated ``Death of George Floyd' ' Behind it is a protest against the rapidly expanding black discrimination.

It has been pointed out that 'face recognition technology is not accurate enough for law enforcement agencies to operate'. For example, when using Amazon's facial recognition technology 'Amazon Relognition' to match a congressman's face against a criminal database, 28 people were mistakenly recognized as criminals.

Amazon's facial recognition technology mistakenly recognizes 28 lawmakers as ``criminals''-GIGAZINE

With the aim of 'improving fairness and accuracy' of such face recognition technology, IBM released a huge data set of 1 million face data in January 2019. However, it was pointed out that this dataset may have used the photos on the photo sharing site Flickr without permission, which was a problem.

IBM releases a huge data set containing face data of 1 million people with the aim of ``fairness of face recognition technology''-GIGAZINE

'IBM's facial recognition business didn't make a lot of money for the company,' said news media CNBC. But it's worth noting that IBM, a major customer of the US government, made such a decision. Is reported to the people concerned. 'This decision is both business and ethical. Many stakeholders, including employees, have been worried about using facial recognition technology over the last few weeks,' said the person. It was