Cato Event Podcast

The explosion in the use of facial recognition and other biometric technologies by government and private‐​sector entities has sparked a national debate about such systems. Just over a year ago, a Pew Research Center survey of American attitudes toward artificial intelligence also asked how people felt about law enforcement use of facial recognition. Among those surveyed, 46 percent thought the use of facial recognition by law enforcement is a good idea, even though two‐​thirds of respondents said police “would be able to track everyone’s location at all times and that police would monitor Black and Hispanic neighborhoods much more often than other neighborhoods.”How reliable is facial recognition? Can biases be unconsciously worked into the algorithms that make facial recognition possible? How many cases of mistaken identity have been attributed to facial recognition to date? How does the law at the federal, state, or local level impact the use of biometric technology? Is the te