I've long since given up on seeing thoughtful policy space discussion, here or anywhere, but I see drdaeman's 'I need assistance in recognizing faces' being downvoted here today, so briefly...

Europe and the US have had different legal perspectives on public photography, and each has had both costs and benefits. Perhaps those contrasts could help inform discussion.

As with any tech in its infancy, thought experiments might illuminate options. I suspect few here would object to a camera feeding only a chip which outputs only hand pose for gestural UI. What if that chip output a facial UID, for help with 'hey, that's someone I know', and that UID was transient and never left the glasses? What if that UID was sent to Meta for arbitrary monitization? If the last two drew different answers, then perhaps the downvoted suggestion to regulate the use, not the camera, might deserve discussion.

Notable elephants in the room include: Trust - with societal lying normalized, and misrepresentation pervasive in policy discourse, it's not unreasonable to suggest that we're societally incapable of regulating use, so broad prohibitions are the only policy tool available. Imperial conservative stagnation - as with drone's "yes it could be an economically transformative technology, and a militarily critical industry, but at every stage of its exploration, it must be perfectly safe(tm)!" (the emph bit heard here on HN) - turning your back on modernization and reform has consequences when you have rival states. Privilege - having done dementia caregiving, there are lots of people whose lives would be profoundly improved by having ride-along see-what-they-see AI companions - "Did I have dinner? Yes, 10 minutes ago. You had X. Maybe you'd like a snack of Y to get more protein?" - even a valid claim of "this tech would hurt me" deserves a pause for "but how might it help others?".

I wish we had some social tech to facilitate doing better at this kind of discussion.

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em-bee 2 days ago | parent [-]

What if that chip output a facial UID, for help with 'hey, that's someone I know'

what if i don't want to be recognized by you? or by anyone else? the problem is not that it allows some people to recognize me. the problem is that it allows everyone to identify everyone else at scale.

if this tool can help someone because they have a medical condition then we can make these devices specifically available for them. that's just like allowing support animals in places where animals are not usually allowed to be.

	▲	mncharity 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		I like the "service animal" analogy. But it's not that easy to escape the ethical fork/tradeoff, as the breeding of universal companions would be far better resourced than that of service animals. Then it's not "only some people are allowed to have cell phones", it's more "we'll ban cell phones and if someone really really has needs, we'll let them have a milk-carton brick of a radio telephone", with an implicit "and that will be good enough for them".