One night in February final yr, a 23-year-old Uber driver named Niradi Srikanth was on the brink of begin one other shift, ferrying passengers across the south Indian metropolis of Hyderabad. He pointed the telephone at his face to take a selfie to confirm his identification. The course of often labored seamlessly. But this time he was unable to log in.
Srikanth suspected it was as a result of he had not too long ago shaved his head. After additional makes an attempt to log in have been rejected, Uber knowledgeable him that his account had been blocked. He shouldn’t be alone. In a survey carried out by MIT Technology Review of 150 Uber drivers within the nation, nearly half had been both briefly or completely locked out of their accounts due to issues with their selfie.
Hundreds of 1000’s of India’s gig financial system employees are on the mercy of facial recognition expertise, with few authorized, coverage or regulatory protections. For employees like Srikanth, getting blocked from or kicked off a platform can have devastating penalties. Read the total story.
—Varsha Bansal
I met a police drone in VR—and hated it
Police departments the world over are embracing drones, deploying them for every little thing from surveillance and intelligence gathering to even chasing criminals. Yet none of them appear to be looking for out how encounters with drones depart individuals feeling—or whether or not the expertise will assist or hinder policing work.
A crew from University College London and the London School of Economics is filling within the gaps, learning how individuals react when assembly police drones in digital actuality, and whether or not they come away feeling kind of trusting of the police.
MIT Technology Review’s Melissa Heikkilä got here away from her encounter with a VR police drone feeling unnerved. If others really feel the identical method, the large query is whether or not these drones are efficient instruments for policing within the first place. Read the total story.
Melissa’s story is from The Algorithm, her weekly publication protecting AI and its results on society. Sign up to obtain it in your inbox each Monday.