DUBAI: A tech writer has raised the possibility that data from Facebook’s #tenyearchallenge or “How Hard Did Aging hit You,” which has gone viral over the past weeks, can be mined for ill-intent – and this is causing a lot of stir lately, according to good.is, a news portal.
The matter stemmed from a tweet by Kate O’Neill, who also is Fortune 500 advisor, who said she “ponders how all this data could be mined to train facial recognition algorithms on age progression and age recognition.”
O’Neill’s tweet, itself, quickly went viral prompting her to further explain: “Thanks to this meme, there’s now a very large data set of carefully curated photos of people from ~10 years ago and now. Is it bad that someone could use it to train a facial recognition algorithm? Not necessarily. It could help with finding missing kids, to cite one benign use.
“Like most emerging technology, facial recognition’s potential is mostly mundane: age recognition is probably most useful for targeted advertising. But also like most tech, there are chances of fraught consequences: it could someday factor into insurance assessment and healthcare.
“I’m not saying anyone should panic or feel bad. It’s simply worth becoming more mindful of how our data can be used. We don’t need to be wary of everything; we just need to think critically, and learn more about the potential our data has at scale. We’re all still learning,” she said.
In other words, said good.is, Facebook could potentially have access to an “unbelievable amount of data that can be used to train a facial recognition algorithm.”
It cited O’Neill as further saying in a piece she wrote for Wired that the data “could be used for nefarious purposes down the road.”
“While Facebook probably isn’t using the #TenYearChallenge to advance facial recognition technology, O’Neill’s theory is a great example of the potential consequences we face when using social media,” the report said, further citing O’Neill as saying that while it was not her intent to claim that the meme is “inherently dangerous,” she knew the facial recognition scenario was “broadly plausible and indicative of a trend that people should be aware of.
“It’s worth considering the depth and breadth of the personal data we share without reservations.”
