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CEO of Facial Recognition Company Kairos Argues that the Technology's Bias and Capacity For Abuse Make It Too Dangerous For Use By Law Enforcement (techcrunch.com)
Brian Brackeen, chief executive officer of the facial recognition software developer Kairos, writes in an op-ed: Recent news of Amazon's engagement with law enforcement to provide facial recognition surveillance (branded "Rekognition"), along with the almost unbelievable news of China's use of the technology, means that the technology industry needs to address the darker, more offensive side of some of its more spectacular advancements. Facial recognition technologies, used in the identification of suspects, negatively affects people of color. To deny this fact would be a lie. And clearly, facial recognition-powered government surveillance is an extraordinary invasion of the privacy of all citizens -- and a slippery slope to losing control of our identities altogether.
There's really no "nice" way to acknowledge these things. I've been pretty clear about the potential dangers associated with current racial biases in face recognition, and open in my opposition to the use of the technology in law enforcement. [...] To be truly effective, the algorithms powering facial recognition software require a massive amount of information. The more images of people of color it sees, the more likely it is to properly identify them. The problem is, existing software has not been exposed to enough images of people of color to be confidently relied upon to identify them.
There's really no "nice" way to acknowledge these things. I've been pretty clear about the potential dangers associated with current racial biases in face recognition, and open in my opposition to the use of the technology in law enforcement. [...] To be truly effective, the algorithms powering facial recognition software require a massive amount of information. The more images of people of color it sees, the more likely it is to properly identify them. The problem is, existing software has not been exposed to enough images of people of color to be confidently relied upon to identify them.
Facial recognition technologies, used in the identification of suspects, negatively affects people of color.
Surely only if the suspect is a person of color.
Facial recognition technologies, used in the identification of suspects, negatively affects people of color
This statement is outright saying that black people are mostly criminals, the only case in which facial recognition identifying suspects "negatively affects people of color".
I think it's time we put an end to subtle racism like this, just because someone is black does not mean they are a criminal.
He's saying that the ML training dataset for people of color is too small. The machine needs to see more black people to identify them properly. This has nothing to do with black crime rate.