The year is 2054 and a man walks into a Gap store. The virtual salesperson greets him by name, “Hello Mr. Yakomoto. Welcome back to the Gap,” from the life-size video monitor. This famous scene is cribbed from the film Minority Report. The prescience displayed in the 2002 film has actually short-changed the advances of science and technology between then and now. Indeed, some may argue that today we are well beyond the fictional capabilities of the Minority Report. The moral dilemma posed in the film, however, remains.
Today many sensors and cameras are in constant search-and-connect mode. Recently, Clearview AI has announced that it is taking its advanced facial recognition technologies beyond the already controversial government/law enforcement usage into the commercial sector. The company, according to the Washington Post, has accumulated over 100 billion facial photos and is adding to the total at a rate of 1.5 billion images per month, which it wishes to monetize.
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