Article Title: Of course your face is your favourite, what if you can’t trust it anymore?

Article Summary

This tongue and cheek article on the far reaching impact of facial recognition software makes the point about how our face can fake various emotions and how this deception will be caught by facial recognition software in the times to come. The article starts by mentioning that our first encounter with the facial recognition software was on Facebook and since then we have become used to this feature and don’t find it strange or creepy.

Further it talks about the application of this technology through the examples of how China is harnessing it to track minorities and build a social credit system and how a Taylor Swift concert collected people’s photographs, without their consent, to weed out stalkers?

The conclusion is that our social interactions have depended on not one but a bagful of faces and there are so many times that we feel something but show a totally different expression as human beings have a universal talent for beguiling one another. It is the basic grease of society. Now its existence is under threat. The logical consequence of facial surveillance is the end of dissembling.

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Words to learn from this Article:

Amorphous: without a clearly defined shape or form.

Pump-priming: the stimulation of economic activity by investment.

Panopticon: a type of institutional building and a system of control, it refers to an experimental laboratory of power in which behaviour could be modified.

Beguiling: charming or enchanting, often in a deceptive way.

Motley: incongruously varied in appearance or character; disparate.

Nails on a chalkboard (idiom): referring to an extremely annoying, unpleasant uncomfortably loud sound or noise.

Dissemble: conceal or disguise one’s true feelings or beliefs.