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Facial Recognition Is Accurate, if You're a White Guy (nytimes.com)

Posted by msmash on from the closer-look dept.

Facial recognition technology is improving by leaps and bounds. Some commercial software can now tell the gender of a person in a photograph. When the person in the photo is a white man, the software is right 99 percent of the time. But the darker the skin, the more errors arise -- up to nearly 35 percent for images of darker skinned women, the New York Times reported, citing a new study. From the report: These disparate results, calculated by Joy Buolamwini, a researcher at the M.I.T. Media Lab, show how some of the biases in the real world can seep into artificial intelligence, the computer systems that inform facial recognition. In modern artificial intelligence, data rules. A.I. software is only as smart as the data used to train it. If there are many more white men than black women in the system, it will be worse at identifying the black women. One widely used facial-recognition data set was estimated to be more than 75 percent male and more than 80 percent white, according to another research study.

9 of 284 comments (clear)

  1. more like RACIAL recognition by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    Software is RACIST!!! Fucking white men.

  2. So it will be no good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    For catching criminals then?

    1. Re:So it will be no good by fph+il+quozientatore · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Sigh... Currently at Moderation: +4 70% Insightful 30% Interesting

      --
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      Hell Segmentation fault

    2. Re: So it will be no good by c6gunner · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yes, a story listing examples of how white people can point guns at cops and live and black people cannot.

      lol. If you're stupid enough to think that a cop with a gun pointed at him gives a shit about the colour of the hand holding it, you can't possibly expect to be taken seriously in these kinds of discussions.

    3. Re: So it will be no good by PopeRatzo · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If you're stupid enough to think that a cop with a gun pointed at him gives a shit about the colour of the hand holding it

      Of course he gives a shit. There are centuries of examples in the United States to police giving white people the benefit of the doubt when black people would have been put under the jailhouse.

      I can't believe you're stupid enough to think that kind of long-standing prejudice just suddenly went away in the past 20 years.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
  3. Maybe they really do by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    all just look the same.

  4. The laws of physics are discriminatory by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    White people's faces reflecting more light is problematic.

  5. Re: Racist, or accurate? by sycodon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Have you ever watched some war move where all the actors are relatively unknown and are sporting a buzz cut?

    Can't tell one white guy from another, especially if they have similar builds.

    And when they later use camo face paint...forget it. All you can rely on is their voices

    --
    When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
  6. Re: Facial recognition by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Strange you would make this about social justice, and not just an interesting technology problem. TFA doesn't mention racism or anything... It's almost like you are some kind of social justice obsessed warrior who has to bring it into every conversation.

    Have to agree with you about the sock puppets though.

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    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC