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Facial Recognition Is Accurate, if You’re a White Guy
The New York Times ^ | 09 Feb 2018 | Steve Lohr

Posted on 02/10/2018 8:38:58 PM PST by Theoria

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, according to a new study that breaks fresh ground by measuring how the technology works on people of different races and gender.

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.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Computers/Internet; Society
KEYWORDS: ai; bigbrother; facialrecognition; software; whitey; youpplalllookalike
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To: ichabod1
Wouldn’t it then make sense to factor skin color out of the equation?

It isn't dark skin, per se, that confuses the algorithms in the software. So, there isn't a line of code that says, in essence, "If subject's complexion is swarthy, then crash!"

Rather, as the excerpt pointed out, more White men than, e.g., dark-skinned women were used to "train" the software.

So, to balance out the software, they could simply use more dark-skinned and female test subjects.

Regards,

41 posted on 02/11/2018 1:04:39 AM PST by alexander_busek (Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.)
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To: Paladin2

My kidlet’s in A.I. He spent 2 yrs. teaching a computer Elizabethan english.

OOOkay. I guess these people have other more important things to do. Lol.

In order to better understand my son’s career choice, I spent several hours last week reading “Machine Learning for Dummies”. It quickly became apparent I need to start with “Machine Learning for Morons”.

It basically boils down to statistic. Data in, data out. And a whole bunch of math.


42 posted on 02/11/2018 1:58:03 AM PST by lizma2
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To: Theoria

43 posted on 02/11/2018 4:29:07 AM PST by Bonemaker (invictus maneo)
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To: Rastus

44 posted on 02/11/2018 4:35:12 AM PST by Bonemaker (invictus maneo)
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To: MountainWalker

It’s an extremely straightforward matter of contrast. The lighter the face the easier it is to distinguish lines and shadows and thus determine shape.


45 posted on 02/11/2018 4:40:34 AM PST by thoughtomator (Number of arrested coup conspirators to date: 0)
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To: Theoria

It’s not gender, it’s sex, and the software is not racist. This proves, with computer programs, that they all “really do look alike.”


46 posted on 02/11/2018 4:44:15 AM PST by I want the USA back (Cynicism may just keep you from going insane in a world that has chosen its own demise.)
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To: Trillian

Soul Man comes to mind.


47 posted on 02/11/2018 4:45:27 AM PST by wally_bert (I didn't get where I am today by selling ice cream tasting of bookends, pumice stone & West Germany)
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To: Brilliant
So they are discriminating against white guys.

hell no that never happens.

there will be protests in the street because the software ONLY works on WHITE MEN and not blacky.

they will demand restitution be made and the CBC will hold hearings on why blacky was discriminated against.

bills will be introduced on the floor banning black and white pics and only having black and black pics by Rep. Jackson Lee and just passes with kick backs discovered from HP concerning black cartridges and new black paper being shoe horned into the bill.

all of this because white men are recognizable

48 posted on 02/11/2018 4:48:09 AM PST by eartick (Been to the line in the sand and liked it, but ready to go again)
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To: Trillian
So are they saying all you have to do is darken your skin in some way to get past this?

yeah before killing yo homey yo just need some shinola

49 posted on 02/11/2018 4:51:26 AM PST by eartick (Been to the line in the sand and liked it, but ready to go again)
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To: Theoria

50 posted on 02/11/2018 4:52:28 AM PST by a fool in paradise (Ask a lib if Alger Hiss colluded with the Russians.)
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To: Theoria

Because it is only politically acceptable to test it on white men.


51 posted on 02/11/2018 4:59:18 AM PST by redgolum
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To: Pearls Before Swine
<>"35 percent for images of darker skinned women"<>

There is far less sexual dimorphism in the faces of Blacks - many of them look far more masculine than the other races.

Hence the need for over-sized posteriors, etc.

52 posted on 02/11/2018 5:23:56 AM PST by Aevery_Freeman (There are far too many Sh*thole-Americans! Especially in government.)
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To: Pearls Before Swine

“They all look alike”

Ain’t that the truth! I’ve been saying that for years.


53 posted on 02/11/2018 5:27:17 AM PST by captain_dave
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To: Theoria

And it’s really a problem if facial recognition decides that you’re a gorilla.

“A major flaw in Google’s algorithm allegedly tagged two black people’s faces with the word ‘gorillas’”

http://www.businessinsider.com/google-tags-black-people-as-gorillas-2015-7


54 posted on 02/11/2018 6:19:27 AM PST by metmom ( ...fixing our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith..)
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To: metmom
gorilla

Wow! Looking at the photos I can see how a set of algorithms could make that mistake. Getting too close to the lens like that and at that angle creates an overly prognathic image.

55 posted on 02/11/2018 6:32:50 AM PST by Sirius Lee (In God We Trust, In Trump We MAGA)
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To: Theoria
Better off Ted - Sensors
56 posted on 02/11/2018 7:43:57 AM PST by Dutch Boy
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To: Mears

They’re not saying face recognition is racist. They’re saying that the algorithms have to be improved because they are largely based on white male features. They’re not looking to abandon face recognition, but the make it more accurate,


57 posted on 02/11/2018 9:05:15 AM PST by Mrs. Don-o ("Genius is of small use to a woman who does not know how to do her hair." - Edith Wharton)
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To: Theoria
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.

No, correlation does not imply causation, and in this case it definitely is not. Facial recognition primarily operates on matrices of the image. It looks at shapes and shadows of the face. A dark faces shadows will blend together and not be close enough for the algorithm to define the image as a face. Conversely, you make the algorithm too open, and it'll start picking random shapes as a face because of that. They don't look at color, it's just numbers based on light and dark contrast.
58 posted on 02/11/2018 9:11:00 AM PST by Svartalfiar
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To: Sirius Lee

Me too.


59 posted on 02/11/2018 9:52:57 AM PST by metmom ( ...fixing our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith..)
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To: alexander_busek

What exactly is the task?
Is it...
(a) determining the identity of someone based on their picture?
(b) determining the sex of someone based on their picture?

If it’s (a), I would think they would have the same amount of training data per subject, but maybe not...
if it’s (b), is a picture of someone not in the training set given as a test, or are the test pictures confined to the subjects?


60 posted on 02/11/2018 11:07:39 AM PST by scrabblehack
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