When The New York Times’s Kashmir Hill exposed a startup called Clearview AI in an article titled “The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It,” the main reaction was one of future shock. Clearview had built an enormous database of photos of people, hooked it up to a facial recognition algorithm, and then sold the results as a service designed to identify almost anybody, instantly. People called the technology “terrifying” and “dangerous,” and tech giants moved to end Clearview’s scraping of their photos for its collection.
But whatever Clearview AI’s fate, some form of the idea it implemented is probably inevitable, especially with the approach of augmented reality eyewear. It’s all about timing, and Clearview AI’s service is too much too soon.
The negative public reaction proves we still have an expectation of privacy on the web, and that it’s still possible for tech companies to cross “the creepy line,” as former Google CEO Eric Schmidt…
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Source : fastcompany.com
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