Facial Recognition Technologies. Etho-Assemblages and Alternative Futures

Introduction

Facial recognition technologies collect billions of faces that are stored for multiple uses spanning individual identification and tracking, to training of deep neural networks, the mainstay of modern artificial intelligence (AI). From tagging a photo on social media or unlocking a computer, to controversial applications of facial recognition in public spaces, schools, workplaces, and law enforcement activities, facial processing technologies have entered almost every aspect of our lives.

Benefits and Criticisms

While expected benefits relate to security and safety, critics highlight that these technologies:

• Normalize surveillance and erode privacy
• Exacerbate discrimination
• Contain insurmountable flaws and inaccuracies

The fAIces project asks:

1. What matters in facial recognition technologies, and why?
2. How do the politics of mattering enact diverse ways of being implicated?
3. Which forms of citizenship and public engagement are affected?
4. How do multiple and complex ethical choices emerge?

Methodology

This study develops a novel methodology by which the perspectives of social groups that have never been studied together, which are jointly but antagonistically implicated in facial recognition technologies, are taken into consideration:

• Scientists who conduct research on facial recognition
• Professionals working in start-ups and technology companies
• Members of advocacy groups and activists
• Black communities
• Artists who incorporate facial recognition in their work

Outcomes

The fAIces project will produce an innovative social theory of the face through the combination of a new conceptual approach, etho-assemblages, which transgresses the idea of pre-given fixed and dichotomic ethical principles and the generation of original empirical data.

Major outcomes are based on:

• Expanding ethics and imagining alternative futures
• Fueling citizenship and public engagement
• Fostering opportunities for academic thinking to be inspired by activism, underrepresented groups, and artistic practices