Washington state governor green-lights facial-recog law championed by... guess who: Yep, hometown hero Microsoft

Here's your quick-fire summary of recent artificial intelligence news. Enter a new AI Atari games champion DeepMind has built a reinforcement-learning bot capable of playing 57 classic Atari 2600 games about as well as the average human. Why 57, you may ask? The Atari 2600 console was launched in 1977 and has a library of …

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft - if not actually a vested interest, then at least in possession of a very nice cardigan

[Pascal Monett]

"the first [..] new law devoted exclusively to putting guardrails in place"

Um, sorry, but banning its usage is also putting guardrails in place.

Very effective ones, at that.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: "the first [..] new law devoted exclusively to putting guardrails in place"

But WA police will have a letter in a locked filing cabinet somewhere in a disused basement saying they "embrace divertingly" and "dialogued with stakeholders" before deployment.

So when the police shoot some brown skinned looking chap for trying to get into Microsoft it will all be alright.

[David 132]

Re: "the first [..] new law devoted exclusively to putting guardrails in place"

Upboted for DA and Pterry references in tge same post!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "the first [..] new law devoted exclusively to putting guardrails in place"

Thin edge of the wedge.

I'm pretty sure the Cloud Act 2018 they "helped" with was also intended to "regulate" access to personal data, but the end result was that any company with a US presence is now exposed to demands to furnish personal data, even if it is held in a foreign jurisdiction by a non-US based offshoot.

Better pay attention that they never get a proper grip on the Linux ecosystem with their "help".

[Paul Hovnanian]

Address the issues up front

It's better that they propose legislation regulating the technology now than waiting for some police departments to deploy it as they want. And then have the privacy advocates try to fight it after the fact.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Address the issues up front

I could have agreed with you if it (a) wasn't the US and (b) wasn't Microsoft.

[DoctorNine]

By rural analogy...

I believe this particular equine has already exited the stables. Latching the gate at this juncture will be less than effective in restraining it.

[herman]

OK, but does it handle Scarves, Abayas, Balaclavas and Surgical Masks?