Ban on facial-recognition technology, supported by Alphabet’s CEO Sundar Pichai

With the European Union (EU) proposing a temporary ban on facial-recognition technology, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai too backed the same. However, Microsoft President Brad Smith refrained and had shown a cool response.

On the one hand when Sundar Pichai had cited the possibility that the technology can be used for nefarious purposes, due to moratorium. Smith, on the other hand, said initiating a ban would probably similar to using a meat cleaver instead of a scalpel to solve potential problems.

At a conference in Brussels, Belgium, Sundar Pichai said that it’s important that governments and regulations tackle it sooner, rather than later and also give a proper framework for it. He even added that the framework can be immediate, however, there might be a waiting period before people really think about how it’s being used up. The main responsibility, however, lies with the Governments.

From Smith

Smith is also the chief legal officer of Microsoft, he had cited benefits of facial recognition in some cases like the NGOs using it to find missing children. He said that he is reluctant to say and ask people from using technology in a way that would reunite families when it can help them do it. 

He stressed that the second thing would be not banning things if you actually believe that there is a reasonable alternative that would enable them to address the problem with a scalpel, rather than a meat cleaver.

What’s EU’s Take?

EU has been slightly tough on dealing with matters related to Artificial Intelligence (AI) than the United States, which would strengthen the existing regulations on privacy and data rights, as per Reuters.

One of the major areas of concern is the ‘deepfakes’ – the video or audio clips that have been manipulated using AI. Sundar Pichai had also said that Google had released open datasets that would help the research community build better tools to detect such fakes.