I distinctly remember watching the Amazon conference when they demonstrated their facial recognition software. It occurred to me that if this technology was around in Mao's China or Stalin's Russia the twentieth century might have been darker and bloodier than it already was. This technology certainly has a lot of potential for improving, but it also has a huge potential for violating human rights. Kudos to the author for talking about this.
Many governments and large rich organizations already have this... so really AWS is just democratizing it. While I agree that's it's creepy af, it's not exactly new. Perhaps through this widening of access the stakes become more obvious and talked about (shining a light).
Once a thousand startups are using this in a non-secretive way, maybe voters will wake up and demand regulation?
It may be a side-effect, but Kudos to Amazon regardless if it does raise awareness.
