Why facial recognition's racial bias problem is so hard to crack - CNET | iPads, MakerEd and More  in Education | Scoop.it

""Jmmy Gomez is a California Democrat, a Harvard graduate and one of the few Hispanic lawmakers serving in the US House of Representatives. But to Amazon's facial recognition system, he looks like a potential criminal.

 

Gomez was one of 28 US Congress members falsely matched with mugshots of people who've been arrested, as part of a test the American Civil Liberties Union ran last year of the Amazon Rekognition program.  Nearly 40 percent of the false matches by Amazon's tool, which is being used by police, involved people of color.

 

The findings reinforce a growing concern among civil liberties groups, lawmakers and even some tech firms that facial recognitioncould harm minorities as the technology becomes more mainstream. A form of the tech is already being used on iPhones and Android phones, and police, retailers, airports and schools are slowly coming around to it too. But studies have shown that facial recognition systems have a harder time identifying women and darker-skinnedpeople, which could lead to disastrous false positives."