Image Recognition
Hoan Ton-That, 35: “The algorithm learns what stays the same over time. Do that with enough examples and it can learn, when it sees a new face it has never seen before”In a light-filled apartment on the Upper West Side, Manhattan, Hoan Ton-That, the glossy-haired founder of controversial facial recognition company Clearview AI, shows me a photograph of myself, from 2017, on his laptop. All that is visible is one eye and the tip of my nose — the merest sliver of side profile. But Ton-That’s technology knows who I am and where I was six years ago. This is one of hundreds of images excavated by Clearview AI after Ton-That took a photograph of me and put the image into his system.