When Brad Smith from Microsoft had called for the regulation of Facial Recognition technology in July I was concerned about where that might go, as it could easily result in stifling innovation. I was therefore relieved to see the principles that Microsoft put forth yesterday, which are for the most part quite sensible.

In particular, I agree and strongly support the due process suggestion on government’s use of facial recognition technology. Surveillance of an individual using facial recognition should require a court order.

I am also a big fan of requiring an API to enable third party testing. This is in fact the first instance I am aware of in which a large tech company proposes such a requirement which I have written about frequently before and is a central part of what I call “Informational Freedom” in my book World After Capital. A great approach here would be for an organization such as NIST to publish a reference data set against which all facial recognition systems could be tested.

The only section of the Microsoft proposal that I think is somewhat under specified and potentially subject to bad regulation is titled “Ensuring meaningful human review.” The goal of this section is laudable, which is to require a human in the loop for high stakes decisions instead of operating fully automated. But the criteria for when that might apply are broad and vague and could wind up encompassing a lot of the positive use cases. I would suggest limiting this part of the proposal to the exercise of government power.

Overall this is an incredibly thoughtful contribution from a technology leader to the discussion of how we can use our new capabilities for good.

When Brad Smith from Microsoft had called for the regulation of Facial Recognition technology in July I was concerned about where that might go, as it could easily result in stifling innovation. I was therefore relieved to see the principles that Microsoft put forth yesterday, which are for the most part quite sensible.

In particular, I agree and strongly support the due process suggestion on government’s use of facial recognition technology. Surveillance of an individual using facial recognition should require a court order.

I am also a big fan of requiring an API to enable third party testing. This is in fact the first instance I am aware of in which a large tech company proposes such a requirement which I have written about frequently before and is a central part of what I call “Informational Freedom” in my book World After Capital. A great approach here would be for an organization such as NIST to publish a reference data set against which all facial recognition systems could be tested.

The only section of the Microsoft proposal that I think is somewhat under specified and potentially subject to bad regulation is titled “Ensuring meaningful human review.” The goal of this section is laudable, which is to require a human in the loop for high stakes decisions instead of operating fully automated. But the criteria for when that might apply are broad and vague and could wind up encompassing a lot of the positive use cases. I would suggest limiting this part of the proposal to the exercise of government power.

Overall this is an incredibly thoughtful contribution from a technology leader to the discussion of how we can use our new capabilities for good.