He spent 10 days in jail and paid
thousands of dollars in legal fees
before the case was eventually dismissed for lack of evidence.
He's now suing the police and the city of Woodbridge,
New Jersey for a violation of his civil rights,
false imprisonment, and false arrest.
Parks is now the third person known
to be wrongfully arrested based on faulty facial recognition
technology.
I prefer not to have images of my face taken.
Facial recognition is typically looked
at as a form of artificial intelligence
that is able to detect patterns in a face
in order to identify a particular individual.
There are companies that have amassed
gigantic databases of people's face
by scanning images on the web.
So whenever you put something on Facebook,
whenever you put something on Instagram,
if you used to use Flickr, if you put it on your own blog,
there are companies who scan that, add that
to their database, and use that to train and operate
their system of facial recognition.
One place we might see it that where people
are very familiar with is the ability to open
your iPhone with your face.
It softens the ways that it is harmful to society
by making it ubiquitous.
We have succumbed to the notion that we should give up
our privacy, our anonymity.
Your anonymity is such a gift.
To a greater or lesser degree, like everyone in America
is being surveilled.
It's a control mechanism.
In certain categories, it is very impactful.
Like not when they're trying to sell you a product right,
but when it's controlling your access to economic opportunity,
I think that's very critical, or when that tracking can lead
you to be prosecuted, right?
There's a whole criminal justice angle
around how this tracking is being used against us.
One of the effects or one of the ways
that facial recognition is often used
is to track down people who are engaged in lawful behavior.
And so now, instead of going about my business
on a walk, or a run, or whatever,
I'm actually being surveilled by every single house.
Who are the people who are going to be heavily policed.
Anti-black racism is built into the notion of surveillance.
The ways that anti-blackness and surveillance are linked
run back far in our history, as long
as the history of this country.
Let's think about that in terms of predicting who's
going to be a criminal, deciding who should
get a job, who gets a mortgage.
Let's think about that in terms of deciding
who has their children taken away by the state.
When you're in a position where your identity itself
is persecuted, then, of course, you should value your privacy
and think about it very, very careful.
There is research that shows that Black women are recognized
with higher error rate.
But what happens is not that you don't get identified.
What happens is you get misidentified as someone else.
So to me, building technology to perpetuate
that type of carceral system is very dangerous.
Imperfect surveillance is bad, but perfect surveillance
is worse.
I don't think we're too late.
I think we are late absolutely, but I
believe in the tech industry to be
able to adapt to new rules and new regulations.
They can recode, reprogram what they
need to work within a fairer more equitable framework
around AI regulation.
And I think society will be better for it.
Think about the narratives that are put forward
by these companies and what those narratives entail.
If I have a package that I am expecting,
and I can't be there, I talk to my neighbor
and ask them to look out for it.
That makes better neighbors.
Streetlights make better neighbors.
People feeling safe and secure makes better neighbors.
What we really need is regulation.
We need regulation with input from the public,
with elected officials by the public
to have checks and balances on the use of, not
just corporations actually.
You have law enforcement and the government
itself using some of the technology
without really the public understanding
the repercussions.
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