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University vending machine error reveals use of secret facial recognition | A malfunctioning vending machine at a Canadian university has inadvertently revealed that a number of them have been usin... (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[+] [email protected] -90 points 8 months ago (48 children)

This seems like an over reaction by people who don't understand the technology or associated risks. Focus on the implementation not the tech. There is no indication that the vending machine is inappropriatly storing or transmitting personally identifiable information or that its making decisions based on biased data.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 8 months ago (8 children)

This is a pretty "generous" take. I ask you then: if the company isn't doing communicating any of the scans/recordings, what is the purpose of the technology being installed in the first place?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago (4 children)

Cameras are one thing.

But if you can actually process it, that's a meaningful cost per unit. The only reason you do that is if you're planning to use it.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

This type of analysis is cheap nowadays. You could easily fit a model to extract demographics from an image on a Jetson Nano (basically a Raspberry Pi with a GPU). Models have gotten more efficient while hardware has also gotten cheaper.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

MSRP is $100. Even assuming you can cut that to $50 in bulk, $50 per unit is something that manufacturers are going to take seriously as an added cost. They're not going to pay it without an intent to use it.

And that's before software costs. Even leveraging open source it's still going to take investment to tailor it to your deployment.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I doubt they would implement thing on every vending machine. They can still derive some useful analytic data from a smaller sample size