Was this AI trained on an unbalanced data set? (Only black folks?) Or has it only been used to identify photos of black people? I have so many questions: some technical, some on media sensationalism

  • Yoruio
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    541 year ago

    Was this AI trained on an unbalanced dataset (only black folks?)

    It’s probably the opposite. the AI was likely trained on a dataset of mostly white people, and thus more easily able to distinguish between white people.

    It’s a problem in ML that has been seen before, especially for companies based in the US where it is just easier to find a large amount of white people as opposed to people of other skin colors.

    It’s really not dissimilar to how people work either, humans are generally more able to distinguish between two people who are races that they grew up with. You’ll make more mistakes when trying to identify people of races you aren’t as familiar with too.

    The problem is when the police use these tools as an authoritative matching algorithm.

    • @[email protected]
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      81 year ago

      It’s not only growing up with them. We’re just better identifying people/animals/things we’re familiar with. Horses all look the same if you’re not around them regularly. You can distinguish colours, but that’s it.

      Not comparing people to horses by the way…

      • DessertStorms
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        -81 year ago

        Not comparing people to horses by the way…

        except you quite literally are

        • @[email protected]
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          01 year ago

          I checked your name to see if you were a contrarian from another thread. You aren’t.

          Then, I thought about the name you chose. Did you mean to spell Dessert (the treat after a meal) or was that a misspelling? Then, I considered that regardless of the intent in spelling, your name appears to refer to a war (Desert Storm: USA vs Iraq in the 90s). Even if it’s playful (Desserts Storming me, yum!), I dunno. At this point, I don’t suspect we align in ideologies. I’ll stop analyzing here.

    • @[email protected]OP
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      21 year ago

      I thought they would have trained it on mugshots. Either way, it should never be used to make direct arrests. I feel like it’s best use would be something like an anonymous tip line that leads to investigation.

      • Yoruio
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        31 year ago

        Using mugshots to train AI without consent feels illegal. Plus, it wouldn’t even make a very good training set, as the AI would only be able to identify perfectly straight images shot in ideal lighting conditions.

    • @[email protected]
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      21 year ago

      Also makes me wonder if our defined digital color spaces being bad at representing darker shades contributes as well.

  • @[email protected]
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    231 year ago

    Putting any other issues aside for a moment, I’m not saying they’re not true also. Cameras need light to make photos, the more light they get, the better the image quality. Just look at astronomy, we don’t find the dark astetoids/planets/stars first, we find the ones that are the brightest and we know more about them than about a planet with lower albedo/light intensity. So it is literally physically harder to collect information about anything black, that includes black people. If you have a person with a skin albedo of 0.2 vs one with 0.6, you get 3x less information in the same amount of time all things being equal.

    And also consider that cameras have a limited dyanmic range and white skin might often be much closer to most objects around us than black skin. So if the facial features of the black person might fall out of the dynamic range of the camera and be lost.

    The real issue with these AIs is that they aren’t well calibrated, meaning the output confidence should mirror how often predictions are correct. If you get a 0.3 prediction confidence, among 100 predictions 30 of them should be correct. Then any predictions lower than 90% or so should be illegal for the police to use, or something like that. Basically the model should tell you that it doesn’t have enough information and the police should appropriately act on that information.

    I mean really facial recognition should be illegal for the police to use, but that’s besides the point.

    • @[email protected]
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      51 year ago

      I don’t know that facial recognition should be illegal for cops to use (though I don’t want them using it, overall), but there should be guardrails in place that prevent them from using it as anything more than “let’s look into this person further.”

      Put differently, a report of a certain model car of a certain color can tip them off to investigate someone driving such a car. It isn’t a reason to arrest that person.

    • Manas
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      41 year ago

      Exactly! I don’t think any programmer would intentionally go out of their way to make it so that only the people with dark skin tones are matched from the database. It has got something to do with how it is not easy to detect facial features on a darker skin tone. The image vectors will have noisy information per pixel and the pixel intensities will be similar in some patches of the image because of the darker skin tone. But that’s just my unbiased programmer’s way of thinking. Let’s hope the world is still beautiful !We are all humans afterall

        • Manas
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          21 year ago

          Yeah you’re right! Programmers should train their models for all skin types . That’s also something that should be added in many many working environments tbh.

    • @[email protected]OP
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      11 year ago

      Yes, there are technical challenges when implementing an AI solution such as this one. From a leadership perspective; however, arrests cannot be made on AI predictions alone. They would be best used like an anonymous tip line that leads to further investigation, but not ever directly to an arrest.

  • mohKohn
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    191 year ago

    12 people. we’re talking about 12 people, so any conclusions are suspect. that being said, facial recognition struggling with black faces from insufficient data is an extremely common problem, so it’d be unsurprising

    • @[email protected]OP
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      31 year ago

      That’s exactly my idea on media sensationalism. It’s really not a large sample. Way more people have been arrested and imprisoned by the justice system without any AI involvement.

    • @[email protected]OP
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      21 year ago

      Then the title would read:

      In every reported case where police mistakenly arrested someone, that person has been Black

      Yeah, that could be the case

  • DessertStorms
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    161 year ago

    It’s amazing how hard some people will work to deny that demonstrable biases influenced by the society we live in, exist in and massively impact science and technology, as if they are above such things, while literally demonstrating their own biases.

    • hh93
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      51 year ago

      I always wonder if the people that are so hard against systemic/structural racism are really thinking that they are being oppressed if someone tries to address that or if they are fully aware of the advantages they have just because they are born with the “right” skincolor in the right neighbourhoods and are against it for purely egoistic reasons because they don’t want to lose that advantage

      • DessertStorms
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        01 year ago

        Both and/or either?
        It’s a complex and deep topic that is also inextricably intertwined with capitalism and other oppressive systems, so giving an in depth answer would take more brain power than I currently have available lol (I have tried, but I keep going off on tangents and getting tangled up in explanations), but I think this quote is quite relevant, so I might leave it at that:

        “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.” -Lyndon B. Johnson

    • @[email protected]OP
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      11 year ago

      demonstrable biases influenced by the society we live in, exist in and massively impact science and technology,

      And then science and technology fortifies biases of society, it’s a feedback loop

  • @nxfsi
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    151 year ago

    Reminder that Google still hasn’t actually fixed the issue in which their image recognition algorithm mislabels black people as gorillas

  • @[email protected]
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    1 year ago

    Just a note that it appears this is USA only. No comment on differences around the world (if the technology is used elsewhere).

    • @[email protected]
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      171 year ago

      In the documentary Coded Bias, the police in England were utilizing new AI facial recognition technology to find criminals on the streets and yes they were almost all black. The documentary states that it is because the models were trained on mostly white people so it couldn’t differentiate black peoples features as well. Or something to that affect.

    • @[email protected]OP
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      11 year ago

      I imagine that in China the headline would read:

      In every reported case where police mistakenly arrested someone using facial recognition, that person has been Chinese

  • @[email protected]
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    121 year ago

    I don’t think this is some systematic racism. Rather, it’s the technology itself that’s lacking. I remember even those motion activated bathroom sinks had problem working well with black hands. I think they’re just not good enough at differentiating between darkness and black skin.

      • @[email protected]
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        21 year ago

        Just because it can be doesn’t mean that’s the first place we go to. Stupidity is more likely than maliciousness and all that.

        • Fish Id Wardrobe
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          61 year ago

          @nieceandtows ::gestures at mankind’s enormously long and complex history of systemic racism::

          People are going to read your post and assume that you are apologising for the police *because* they are the police. You know, one of those “they must have done something wrong or the police wouldn’t have arrested them” people.

          I’m sure you’re not one of those. Just saying how it looks.

          • @[email protected]
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            01 year ago

            Eh. I have a loved one with some undiagnosed mental health issues, and it’s a constant struggle because they always assume the worst of anyone and everyone. Watching/living with them, I’ve learned that it’s always better to assume good about people than assuming bad about them. Assuming bad things without proof only ever ruins your happiness and relationships. People can read my comments and understand what I’m saying like you do. If they don’t and assume I’m racist, it only proves my point.

              • @[email protected]
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                01 year ago

                Not talking about systemic racism in general. I know there’s a lot of that. I’m talking about systemic racism causing this particular issue. I’m saying because there have been cases of motion sensors not detecting black hands because of technical issues. I’m not apologizing for anyone, just pointing out the fact that it has happened before due to technical deficiencies.

                • Fish Id Wardrobe
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                  01 year ago

                  @nieceandtows The fact that there have been issues with sensors (which is true) does not disprove systemic racism (which exists). That’s like saying that because I put vinegar in the dressing the lemon juice wasn’t sour. It doesn’t follow.

    • @[email protected]
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      71 year ago

      haha this is reminding me of an episode of Better off Ted, where they replaced all sensors with optical based ones that did not recognize black people. Their solution was to hire white guys to follow them around to open doors and turn on lights for them

    • DessertStorms
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      51 year ago

      it’s the technology itself that’s lacking.

      the technology is designed by people, people who didn’t consider those with dark skin and so designed a technology that is lacking.
      Lets not act as if technology just springs spontaneously in to being.

    • @[email protected]OP
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      11 year ago

      I think it is come systematic racism. AI didn’t arrest this person, police officers did. They did no further investigation before making the arrest because they didn’t have to: the person has black skin. Case closed.

      • Bibliotectress
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        31 year ago

        I watch it on Hulu, in case you have that. The whole show is a joke about corporate America and how companies will do anything for a profit. It’s so good. There are only 2 seasons.

  • @Boggy
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    01 year ago

    So the AI is racist.

      • @Boggy
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        11 year ago

        I mean that just means the AI has a racist creator. Still possible.

      • @[email protected]OP
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        -11 year ago

        That’s like saying people can’t be rascist, they have bad training.

        MS’s Tay chatbot was demonstrably rascist FWIW

        • Rikudou_Sage
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          11 year ago

          No, it’s not the same. Unless you think AI and people are the same thing.

    • DessertStorms
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      31 year ago

      The world of information the AI was trained on is racist, making the AI another way to perpetuate systemic racism, yes.

    • @WhiteHawk
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      01 year ago

      An algorithm cannot be racist, its training data is the issue