The proliferation of cameras in so many public spaces raises an ethical issue: Is facial recognition technology identifying us as we go to the airport or visit our favorite store? The development of artificial intelligence prompts many ethical issues, whether it’s facial recognition or ChatGPT.
“There’s a lot of interesting work on facial recognition and the privacy concerns that come with the use of facial recognition in public spaces,” says Clint Hursham, one of a dozen graduate students who took part in the Northeastern University Ethics Institute’s summer training program to expand the Al and data ethics research community.
Hursham, a doctoral student at the University of Kansas, focused on privacy and facial recognition technology for his final project. He analyzed the role consent plays in individuals being recorded in public and the ethical issues that arise in that conversation. “What I tried to show even on some alternative counts of privacy, we end up with the same conclusion that facial recognition technologies are really problematic for privacy,” he says.