Brazilians weigh the benefits of AI facial recognition against the costs Loading... | Rio de Janeiro In a downtown office building near Rio de Janeiro’s famous Sambadrome avenue, a dozen police officers sit behind desks staring up at a large bank of computer monitors. Mug shots, camera footage, and interactive maps blink from the screens. This is Rio’s Integrated Command and Control Center, or CICC, the state security forces’ technological nerve center. Facial recognition cameras operated by the military police are a key part of this infrastructure. Using artificial intelligence, smart cameras scan the biometric data of passersby against a database of outstanding arrest warrants. Officers at the CICC are alerted if there’s a match and send the closest patrol to conduct a stop. Why We Wrote This Who suffers when AI gets things wrong? In Brazil, where fighting crime is a top priority for citizens, facial-recognition technology is exploding, even though the legislature is still working on laying out clear rules. Fear of crime that for many outweighs concern for data privacy has made Brazil fertile ground for the mass adoption of these kinds of surveillance technologies. There are more than 560 projects using facial recognition technology across the country – more than double the number in use two years ago, according to civil society organization O Panóptico. The majority are run for public security purposes by local governments or police forces, but they’re also implemented in some private spaces, such as schools. While advocates say smart cameras can help bring down crime, the explosion of this technology without a clear legal framework raises questions about oversight, privacy, and who suffers the most when AI gets things wrong. It’s a public policy that has widespread support, says Thallita Lima, research coordinator at O Panóptico. “Public security is a problem,