PROPOSITION: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE SHOULD BE REGULATED

AFFIRMATIVE: Don't Trust Governments With A.I. Facial Recognition Technology

- RONALD BAILEY

DO YOU WANT the government always to know where you are, what you are doing, and with whom you are doing it? Why not? After all, you've nothing to worry about if you're not doing anything wrong. Right?

That's the world that artificial intelligence (A.I.), coupled with tens of millions of video cameras in public and private spaces, is making possible. Not only can A.I.-amplified surveillance identify you and your associates, but it can track you using other biometric characteristics, such as your gait, and even identify clues to your emotional state.

While advancements in A.I. certainly promise tremendous benefits as they transform areas such as health care, transportation, logistics, energy production, environmental monitoring, and media, serious concerns remain about how to keep these powerful tools out of the hands of state actors who would abuse them.

"Nowhere to hide: Building safe cities with technology enablers and AI," a report by the Chinese infotech company Huawei, explicitly celebrates this vision of pervasive government surveillance. Selling A.I. as "its Safe City solution," the company brags that "by analyzing people's behavior in video footage, and drawing on other government data such as identity, economic status, and circle of acquaintances, AI could quickly detect indications of crimes and predict potential criminal activity."

Already China has installed more than 500 million surveillance cameras to monitor its citizens' activities in public spaces. Many are facial recognition cameras that automatically identify pedestrians and drivers and compare them against national photo and license tag ID registries and blacklists. Such surveillance detects not just crime but political protests. For example, Chinese police recently used such data to detain and question people who participated in COVID-19 lockdown protests.