Google is testing facial recognition technology for campus security, starting at site near Seattle
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Google is testing facial recognition technology for office security “to help prevent unauthorized individuals from gaining access to our campuses,” according to a description of the program that was viewed by CNBC.
The initial test is taking place at one of Alphabet’s sites in Kirkland, Washington, a Seattle suburb, the document says. Interior security cameras have been collecting facial data and comparing it to images stored from employee badge images, which includes the extended workforce, to help determine if there are unauthorized people on the premises.
Google’s Security and Resilience Services (GSRS) team will use the data to help identify people “who may pose a security risk to Google’s people products, or locations,” the document says.
“There are protocols in place for identifying, reporting, and potentially removing known unauthorized persons to maintain safety and security of our people and spaces,” it says.
At the Kirkland testing site, people entering the building will not be able to opt out of the facial screening. However, the document says the data is “strictly for immediate use and not stored,” and that employees can opt out of having their ID images stored by filling out a form. Google told CNBC that while ID badge photos were part of the test, they won’t be used going forward.
“For many years our security team has been testing and implementing new systems and protections to help keep our people and spaces as safe as possible,” a Google spokesperson said in an email.
Google has experienced at least one notable violent incident in the past. In 2018, a woman opened fire at YouTube’s office in San Bruno, California, injuring three people. The shooter allegedly targeted YouTube because she “hated” the company for blocking her videos.
The Kirkland test lands at a sensitive moment for Google, which is at the center of the artificial intelligence boom and is rapidly adding AI across its portfolio of products and services. Facial recognition technology is particularly controversial because of the privacy concerns around surveillance.
In 2021, Google proposed new security changes, including fences around parts of its headquarters in Mountain View, California, especially as its construction plans included public and retail spaces. More recently, company executives have cited security reasons for cutting off access to employees after a series of layoffs and protests over the past year.
In early 2023, the company announced plans to eliminate about 12,000 jobs, or 6% of its workforce, in response to a downturn in the online ad market and a broader economic slowdown. Google has laid off more employees recently, moving some engineering roles to India and Mexico.
In a high-profile incident in April, Google terminated more than 50 employees after a series of protests over labor conditions at the company and against Project Nimbus, Google’s cloud and AI contract with the Israeli government and military. Employees staged a sit-in protest at offices in New York and Sunnyvale offices.
Chris Rackow, Google’s vice president of global security, told staffers at an all-hands meeting last month that “extensive use of all of our video camera footage” helped to identify employees that the company said were disruptive during the protests and who made their colleagues feel threatened and unsafe, according to audio of the meeting obtained by CNBC.
Facial recognition technology became a big topic for lawmakers in 2020, following pressure from civil rights advocates and national protests sparked by the murder of George Floyd. Amazon, Microsoft and IBM imposed restrictions on the sale of their technology to police.
The following year, Amazon was questioned by U.S. senators about its use of employee surveillance after the company deployed AI-equipped cameras in delivery vans. In April, warehouse workers sued Amazon alleging the company illegally collected biometric data that included face scans. And late last year, the Federal Trade Commission proposed barring Rite Aid from using facial recognition software in its drugstores for five years to settle allegations it improperly used the technology to identify shoplifters.
Security is a costly endeavor for Google not just on campuses but all the way up to the top ranks of the company. In 2023, CEO Sundar Pichai’s personal security cost the company $6.8 million, up from $5.9 million a year earlier, according to regulatory filings.
Deliveroo CEO Will Shu.
Aurelien Morissard | IP3 | Getty Images
LONDON — Deliveroo CEO Will Shu is set to step down from the food delivery company he co-founded over a decade ago.
Shu, who established Deliveroo in 2013 with childhood friend Greg Orlowski, said Thursday that he will step down as CEO after its takeover by U.S. rival DoorDash is completed.
DoorDash announced its deal to buy the British online takeout platform in May. The acquisition values Deliveroo at £2.9 billion ($4 billion).
“I have decided that now is the right time for me to step down,” Shu said in a statement Thursday. “Taking Deliveroo from being an idea to what it is today has been amazing.”
“Today the Company’s growth and profitability are accelerating and we are delivering on our mission to transform the way people shop and eat, but after 13 years I want to contemplate my next challenge,” Shu added.
Deliveroo said that its acquisition by DoorDash “continues to progress as anticipated” and is expected to close on Oct. 2 following a scheduled Sept. 30 court hearing to sanction the deal.
Once it closes, the takeover will represent an end to Deliveroo’s tumultuous time in the public markets.
Deliveroo saw its shares plunge 30% in 2021 on the day of its initial public offering, dealing a significant blow to London’s ambitions to compete with New York for more high-profile tech listings.
The Nvidia logo appears on a smartphone reflecting the flags of China and the U.S.
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Beijing has reportedly halted purchases of yet another AI chip from Nvidia, freezing it out of the market completely — a move industry experts say reflects the country’s growing confidence in domestic chip makers and an attempt at gaining trade leverage.
It was only a few months ago when Jensen Huang announced, from China, that the U.S. would allow it to resume sales of its made-for-China H20 graphics processing units, reversing a previous halt on their exports.
At the time, Huang had also revealed the company’s new RTX Pro GPU for the Chinese market, which had been tailored for AI smart factories and logistics.
But Nvidia’s fortunes flipped in August, when it was reported that regulators in China had begun mandating tech firms to halt purchases of Nvidia’s H20s pending a national security review.
Now that the mandate has been expanded to Nvidia’s RTX Pro 6000D chip, rendering the company unable to sell any products to Chinese customers, according to a report by the Financial Times on Wednesday.
That comes after Chinese regulators on Monday said that Nvidia had violated the country’s anti-monopoly law, as per a preliminary probe, adding they would continue their investigation.
While the exact motives of China’s actions against Nvidia remain unclear, tech and geopolitical analysts say the developments show China has become more confident in its own ability to make AI chips and is wielding that as a leverage against the U.S.
Another Nvidia chip crumbles
The reported reasons for Chinese regulators’ intervention in the H20 had been the need for a national security review over concerns that Nvidia chips could be outfitted with certain tracking systems — an idea proposed by American lawmakers.
Experts had characterized the move as part of Beijing’s efforts aimed at encouraging Chinese AI companies to explore domestic alternatives, though they forecast that exports would eventually be cleared due to high demand from Chinese AI players.
Meanwhile, some Chinese AI companies had indicated they would order tens of thousands of the RTX Pro 6000D, and had started testing and verification work with Nvidia’s server suppliers up until they were asked to cease such activities, according to FT’s reporting.
The country’s regulators, however, blocked access to those Nvidia chips after summoning domestic AI chip makers and concluding they had reached performance comparable to the U.S. company’s made-for-China products, according to the FT.
However, performance isn’t the only challenge facing China’s AI chips. Analysts contend that capacity is also a major barrier, with the domestic industry still unable to produce enough chips at scale.
Reporting from the FT suggests Beijing has also become more confident in this area, with local chipmakers seeking to triple the country’s total output of AI processors next year.
“All these recent actions show that China has much more confidence in their domestic sector than they used to,” said Qingyuan Lin, a senior analyst covering China semiconductors at Bernstein.
China’s chip progress
There are signs that China’s AI ecosystem has been progressing.
Chinese tech giant Huawei announced Thursday new AI compute infrastructure using its in-house Ascend chips, claiming they would be the “world’s most powerful.”
Research firm SemiAnalysis found in April that Huawei’s latest-generation CloudMatrix system was able to outperform Nvidia’s competing AI compute system on some metrics — despite each Ascend chip delivering only about one-third the performance of an Nvidia processor. Huawei built its advantage by having five times as many chips linked together.
Meanwhile, Chinese AI start-up DeepSeek had hinted last month that its latest AI model would be compatible with the country’s “next generation” homegrown AI chips. China’s Alibaba and Baidu have reportedly started using internally designed chips to help train their AI models, partly replacing those made by Nvidia.
Still, analysts are skeptical about China’s ability to cut its dependence on Nvidia chips.
“In terms of China’s domestic chip preparedness, I believe it is misleading to suggest the country can advance AI at a current level solely with domestic alternatives and without NVIDIA’s systematic offerings,” Ray Wang, research director for semiconductors, supply chain and emerging technology at Futurum Group, told CNBC.
Seeking leverage?
Experts, while agreeing that China has become more confident in its ability to counter Nvidia, suggest the country could be using access to its market as leverage in trade negotiations with the U.S.
“The move is likely to be a negotiation tactic as part of a broader set of discussions involving other topics including tariffs. China is no doubt trying to encourage and establish silicon self sovereignty, while also getting the best possible chip in the meantime,” AJ Kourabi, analyst at SeminAlysis, told CNBC.
The U.S. has indicated that it might allow even more advanced Nvidia chips than the H20 into the Chinese market.
Under the Joe Biden administration, export controls on advanced chips had been increasingly tightened with the aim of blocking China’s access to the best American technology. That trend after accelerating initially under the Trump administration is now reversing.
According to Reva Goujon, director at Rhodium Group, by rejecting the H20 and RTX Pro, Beijing could be looking to create an opportunity to negotiate access to more advanced GPUs.
She added that it’s likely not a coincidence that it comes amid other leverage-building by China this week, referring to its recent anti-dumping investigation into imports of certain analog chips from the U.S.
“As Beijing tests Trump’s transactionalism, it has to build up leverage of its own,” she said.
At the Meta Connect developer conference, Mark Zuckerberg, head of the Facebook group Meta, shows the prototype of computer glasses that can display digital objects in transparent lenses.
Andrej Sokolow | Picture Alliance | Getty Images
Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday unveiled the $799 Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses, the social media company’s first consumer-ready smart glasses with a built-in display.
The glasses, which costs $799, contain a small digital display that can be controlled via hand gestures through a wristband powered by neural technology, confirming a CNBC report in August. A promotional video of the new smart glasses appeared on Meta’s YouTube page on Monday but was later removed.
Tune in Thursday at 11:00 a.m. ET: Meta Chief Product Officer Chris Cox joins CNBC TV to discuss with Julia Boorstin the highlights of Meta’s annual Connect event, live from the company’s HQ in Menlo Park CA.
The new smart glasses are a bridge between the company’s audio-only Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses and the experimental Orion augmented reality glasses that the company revealed at last year’s Connect event. Orion can overlay 3D visuals over a person’s real-world field of view with the help of a wireless computing puck, but the glasses are expensive to make and not yet available to consumers.
The Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses come with the Meta Neural Band, an EMG wristband that allows users to control the device using hand gestures.
“These are glasses with the classic style that you’d expect from Ray-Ban, but they’re the first AI glasses with a high resolution display and a fully weighted Meta neural band,” Zuckerberg said.
With the new glasses, people can do tasks like watch videos through the display or see and respond to text messages, Zuckerberg said. The display doesn’t block a person’s view, and it disappears when not being used, he said.
The glasses go on sale in the U.S. on Sept. 30.
During a demo, Zuckerberg repeatedly attempted to call Meta tech chief Andrew Bosworth unsuccessfully.
“This is uh — you know, it happens,” Zuckerberg said.
Meta has been developing its smart glasses with eyewear giant EssilorLuxottica since 2019, and last year renewed a long-term partnership agreement to continue making the products.
The company on Wednesday also debuted the Oakley Meta Vanguard smart glasses, intended for athletes who participate in high-intensity sports like snowboarding and mountain biking. The Oakley-branded glasses will cost $499 when they launch on Oct. 21, making it $100 more expensive than the Oakley Meta HSTN glasses that went on sale in June.
The Oakley Meta Vanguard smart glasses have a sportier look than the Oakley Meta HSTN glasses thanks to a wraparound design that extends its colorful lenses around a person’s temples. Unlike the Oakley Meta HSTN glasses, the new model contains a button on the underside of its frames so that athletes who wear helmets can more easily capture photos and videos.
The new sports-centric smart glasses have up to nine hours of battery life, can capture 3K video and contain speakers that are louder than their predecessors. The glasses can connect with Garmin-branded fitness watches to track certain stats like their heart rates using the Meta AI assistant. Preorders start today.
Meta also debuted the Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 2), the latest version of the company’s original smart glasses. The Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 2) costs $379, up from $299 for the version released in 2023. The Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 2) has double the battery life of the previous model, lasting 8 hours on a single charge, and a more powerful camera that can capture 3K Ultra HD video. The new glasses go on sale today.
Zuckerberg also announced Horizon TV, pitching it as a way to watch television shows, sporting events and movies using the company’s Quest VR headsets. Some of Meta’s partners who will be contributing content to the app include Disney and Universal Pictures, Zuckerberg said.
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