剖析人脸识别如何通过数据化手段消灭人脸的多样性,构建虚假的标准化身份。
Frankenstein in the Pipeline: Computational Epistemicide in Facial Recognition
- 用弗兰肯斯坦隐喻揭示人脸识别流程中逐步剥离人脸真实性的机制。
- 将人脸拆解为可计算向量,形成统一标准身份,实现跨系统识别。
- 批判伦理优化无法解决根本问题,主张废除向量化身份的合法性。
尽管计算机视觉的优生学根源在批判技术研究中已有充分讨论,但其在流水线操作层面如何实施暴力却较少关注。本文以玛丽·雪莱的《弗兰肯斯坦》为诊断框架,而非比喻意外后果,强调解构、重构与制造一种由其生成过程赋予合法性的“怪物”。作者提出“计算知识灭绝”概念,即在计算领域扩展苏利·卡内罗的“知识灭绝”理论——摧毁作为活生生关系界面的脸,授权数值代理作为身份的优先场所。在检测/裁剪、关键点定位、对齐/正脸化和嵌入阶段,人脸被逐步缩减为可稳定化的数据,产生可读性的标准脸与对应的形式主体。向量化完成弗兰肯斯坦式的“缝合”:被解剖的人脸被重组为固定维度的可流通人工制品。随后,基于距离的相似性与阈值判断运作出“足够接近”的规范,使识别不可分割地与标准化绑定,证明改革主义的“伦理AI”优化在结构上不足。论文最终主张废除作为规范立场:拒绝向量化身份作为权利与准入的合法基础,并瓦解通过可拆解数据点治理人类生命的制度冲动。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
While the eugenic roots of computer vision are well-documented in critical technology studies, less attention has been paid to the operational mechanisms through which this violence is enacted at the level of the pipeline. This paper employs Mary Shelley's Frankenstein not as a metaphor for unintended consequences, but as a diagnostic framework for method: disassembly, reconstruction, and the production of a creature whose legitimacy is asserted by the procedure that made it. I argue that embedding-based facial recognition enacts what I call computational epistemicide, an extension of Sueli Carneiro's concept of epistemicide to the computational domain - by destroying the face as a living, relational surface and authorizing a numerical proxy as the privileged site of identity. Across detection/cropping, landmarking, alignment/frontalization, and embedding, the face is progressively narrowed to what can be stabilized as data, producing a canonical face as the condition of legibility and a corresponding form-subject as the condition of recognition. Vectorization completes the Frankensteinian "stitching": the dissected face is reassembled into a fixed-dimensional artifact designed to circulate across databases and institutions. I then show how distance-based similarity and thresholding operationalize a norm of "close enough," making recognition inseparable from standardization and rendering reformist "ethical AI" optimization structurally insufficient. The paper concludes by arguing for abolition as a normative stance: refusing vectorized identity as a legitimate basis for rights and access, and dismantling the institutional impulse to govern human life through dissectible data points.
Thank you to arXiv for use of its open access interoperability. PaperDance 不是 arXiv 官方产品;中文卡片由大模型生成,请以原文为准。