Facial recognition technology reportedly misidentifies Black and Asian face

Source: Dimitri Otis / Getty

Facial Recognition Tech Misidentifies Black And Asian People

Technology is cool until it isn’t.

According to CBC, a report from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) states that newly-adopted facial recognition software is 10 to 100 times more likely to misidentify a Black person or an Asian person than a white person.

More specifically, African-American women are more likely to be misidentified in a “one-to-many” matching program used in criminal investigations. Sounds like another Sandra Bland just waiting to happen.

Joy Buolamwini, founder of the Algorithmic Justice League, called the report “a comprehensive rebuttal” of those saying artificial intelligence (AI) bias was no longer an issue. The study comes at a time of growing discontent over the technology in the United States, with critics warning it can lead to unjust harassment or arrests.

China is already heavily invested in this technology and is actively using it in street-mounted “security” cameras in their society. However…

China’s SenseTime, an AI startup valued at more than $10 billion, had “high false match rates for all comparisons” in one of the NIST tests, the report said.

SenseTime’s algorithm produced a false positive more than 10 per cent of the time when looking at photos of Somali men, which, if deployed at an airport, would mean a Somali man could pass a customs check one in every 10 times he used passports of other Somali men.

Yeah, naw. We good.