12 ms·

There are real technical challenges here. Lighter skin has more contrast between light and dark.

gugagore 6y ago
Worth noting that sometimes technical challenges may arise because of the way technology was designed as opposed to being inherently challenging https://www.npr.org/2014/11/13/363517842/for-decades-kodak-s-shirley-cards-set-photography-s-skin-tone-standard https://www.npr.org/2014/11/13/363517842/for-decades-kodak-s... but, yes, dark skin reflects less light than light skin. by definition.
ponker 6y ago
But the fact that the technology is considered viable given this failure mode is what reflects the bias. If a vendor has tech that can only distinguish white faces it will sell it as “detect your best customers and offer them special deals when they enter your store.” If the tech can only recognize black faces it will be sold as “recognize known criminals in the neighborhood and alert police when they enter your store.”
- nostromo 6y ago
  I'd like to know what cartoon villain tech company you're referring to...
centimeter 6y ago
White people also have higher facial variance in general. I vaguely remember in university we had an assignment to generate “eigenfaces” or something and if you partitioned the faces by race the output of the SVD would be much wider for white people. This isn’t especially surprising when you consider the fact that white people have more light/dark contrast, more hair colors, more eye colors, etc. I think a lot of the “bias” complaints levied against algorithms like this are not bias at all, but just humans who are unhappy the world doesn’t quite live up to their idealized model.
- rockarage 6y ago
  When you sample from a smaller pool you will make uninformed statements like this. Black/Dark people of the world are not limited to Black people in Atlanta. Bet many people here do not know that there are Black people in this world, some who have naturally blonde hair and some who have blue eyes, google it. Moreover capturing Black/Dark skin and features requires more accurate light metering & lighting because dark skin absorb more light. There's a lot variance in cheekbones, nose and lips. Humans' features in general, are more complicated then you realize.
  - throwaway391003 6y ago
    Ok but that can still be true (blonde hair, blue eyes) while there still being much more variations in the white population than in the black population. I'm curious how many white people there are on earth vs how many black people there are, and other races. A couple google searches didn't give me any easy finds
    - user982 6y ago
      > Ok but that can still be true (blonde hair, blue eyes) while there still being much more variations in the white population than in the black population. Even the man who coined "Caucasian" as a racial category recognized that there was more physical variance among African populations and individuals than compared with Europeans.
      - Gibbon1 6y ago
        I think there is by far more mitochondrial DNA variations inside Africa than outside.
    - claudeganon 6y ago
      That’s because “white” and “black” are loose, shifting, ideological constructions with little basis in the scientific reality of human genetic variation. Many “white people” weren’t considered “white” until fairly recently and Africa actually has more human genetic variation than anywhere else.
chillacy 6y ago
I recall being amused maybe 3 years ago when I took a picture of two friends, one with dark skin, one with light skin, and the camera choose to expose for the darker skin. He looked fine, the lighter skin friend looked like snow lit by headlights. Completely washed out. The camera settings and background lighting make a big difference.
- andromeduck 6y ago
  Was this on a DSLR/MILC? My Sony seems to do this sometimes when I have a very dark and very light subject outside but it's usually fine in RAW.
  - mschuster91 6y ago
    On my A7S2 I simply use the exposure correction wheel in such situations - or use the exposure series function so I can mess around with HDR later in Photoshop.
    - andromeduck 6y ago
      Yeah I usually just use exposure comp too, it works pretty well most of the time but candids when everyone's moving and the background is changing can be pretty hard without a fill flash to help out a bit. Thank god for iso invariance though.
- dingaling 6y ago
  Which is why photographers ignore autoexposure and instead meter on a known reference such as an 18% grey card, or green grass.
  - WorldMaker 6y ago
    I learned that one convention group I'm a part of converged on very visible glossy white badge cards not just because it is easy to sharpie names visibly on (in classic "Hello my name is" style), but also out of a request from the photography group as it is a very useful meter reference visible in almost every photo of any group member. Seeing how many great photos come out of the event in sometimes very strange lighting conditions (as you might expect from an event that includes everything from brightly lit outdoors events to indoor conference spaces and theaters to rock show-lit concerts, and everything in between), I'd imagine that little metering trick is doing wonders.
aeturnum 6y ago
There are real technical challenges in producing photographs of both light and dark skin, but the focus on light skinned subjects have led to an accumulation of technical solutions. Computerized facial recognition has been progressing for something like 50 years, with each paper building on previous work. I suspect a parallel world where the dominant social group hard dark skin would explore different technical avenues, focus on ways of recognizing faces that lean less on tone, etc. Obviously it's hard to say with what we know now. Humans have difficulty recognizing cross-ethnic faces, however I don't think dark skinned people are worse at recognizing same-ethnic faces than light skinned people. To me that suggests our social history is more to blame than some fundimental quality of skin tone.
mwcampbell 6y ago
But does the reason matter when the result is discrimination against people through no fault of their own?
- raxxorrax 6y ago
  Please discriminate against me too if that means facial recognition isn't working.
  - krisoft 6y ago
    That’s not necessarily what you want. “not working” can manifest itself in false positive matches too. Cue “all X people look the same” stupidness. And the truth is, the danger zone is when the algo is somewhat ok, but a few percents worse on the discriminated group. If it were obviously stupidly bad (like for example any two black people are a positive match according to it) then people will disregard it. But if its just slightly bad thats harder to notice and suddenly your loan/car rental is rejected because the security system says you look too much like a specific known fraudster. And of course they wont even tell you that thats the reason, because security.
    - raxxorrax 6y ago
      I worked in imaging for medical diagnostic support and dark complexions are just plainly more difficult to analyse because of restricted illumination times and limited contrast. Sensors got much better in recent years though. The indications in question were extremely rare for black people on the other hand. Another use case was the detection of Vitiligo, which is significantly more easy on black people. There was a great demand for therapies because patients are stigmatized for different reasons, especially in Africa because the symptoms can look similar to some deadly diseases. There is a lot of discrimination in imaging, but it doesn't have to do with race and more with the creation of binary images. As for facial recognition. I see some use cases for convenience, but it would be far more effective to disallow widespread application because of the numerous unsolved problems. So I see the move from IBM positively, even if they continue their work. In the end I believe face reg to be possible without bias, but I don't have these propped up security needs.
pfranz 6y ago
It goes even deeper than that. If you look at the history of photography, film, and television you'll see a bias towards white skin tones that standards have been built up around. Just looking at "leader ladies" or common reference images there isn't a bunch of diversity. In practice I've heard cinematographers and photographers bring it up around filming different ethnicities. It starts with changing the exposure, but means you have to spend more attention towards color reproduction. This can extend beyond the film or image sensor to biasing lighting equipment, defaults, standards, and thresholds. Looking through the literature you'll see things like, "the design decisions in the NTSC’s test images effectively biased the format toward rendering white people as more lifelike than other races" https://sterneworks.org/Mulvin-Sterne-Scenes.pdf https://sterneworks.org/Mulvin-Sterne-Scenes.pdf I'm mostly familiar with the history in the US. I'm earnestly curious about how other countries accommodated these types of things as they adopted the technologies.
- dnautics 6y ago
  It's deeper than that. The chemicals used in analog color photography didn't have a dye profile that could capture people of color effectively until the 80s.
  - lallysingh 6y ago
    I'm guessing that nobody cared to try.
  - sangnoir 6y ago
    Even deeper- Kodak only started putting effort to get the process right in the 70s after customers complained about poor color reproduction[1] in wood grain and chocolate 1. https://petapixel.com/2015/09/19/heres-a-look-at-how-color-film-was-originally-biased-toward-white-people/ https://petapixel.com/2015/09/19/heres-a-look-at-how-color-f...
  - solarkraft 6y ago
    I suspect it to be deeper than that: The relevant people didn't think it was worth it to invest all that much into developing it.
TuringNYC 6y ago
If there are technical challenges which would produced bias results...perhaps the answer is to not release the product. Perhaps do more R&D or more training on broader samples until one has a better product to release?
- xupybd 6y ago
  I don't think they are releasing products to make the world a better place. After all this tech is very dangerous. I don't the the ethics of racial bias are factored in to the decision making at these companies. This is one bias I think benefits folks with dark skin. I'd love to be in the group that doesn't get recognised by this terrifying tech.

Worth noting that sometimes technical challenges may arise because of the way technology was designed as opposed to being inherently challenging https://www.npr.org/2014/11/13/363517842/for-decades-kodak-s-shirley-cards-set-photography-s-skin-tone-standard https://www.npr.org/2014/11/13/363517842/for-decades-kodak-s... but, yes, dark skin reflects less light than light skin. by definition.

ponker 6y ago

But the fact that the technology is considered viable given this failure mode is what reflects the bias. If a vendor has tech that can only distinguish white faces it will sell it as “detect your best customers and offer them special deals when they enter your store.” If the tech can only recognize black faces it will be sold as “recognize known criminals in the neighborhood and alert police when they enter your store.”

nostromo 6y ago
I'd like to know what cartoon villain tech company you're referring to...

centimeter 6y ago

White people also have higher facial variance in general. I vaguely remember in university we had an assignment to generate “eigenfaces” or something and if you partitioned the faces by race the output of the SVD would be much wider for white people. This isn’t especially surprising when you consider the fact that white people have more light/dark contrast, more hair colors, more eye colors, etc. I think a lot of the “bias” complaints levied against algorithms like this are not bias at all, but just humans who are unhappy the world doesn’t quite live up to their idealized model.

rockarage 6y ago
When you sample from a smaller pool you will make uninformed statements like this. Black/Dark people of the world are not limited to Black people in Atlanta. Bet many people here do not know that there are Black people in this world, some who have naturally blonde hair and some who have blue eyes, google it. Moreover capturing Black/Dark skin and features requires more accurate light metering & lighting because dark skin absorb more light. There's a lot variance in cheekbones, nose and lips. Humans' features in general, are more complicated then you realize.
- throwaway391003 6y ago
  Ok but that can still be true (blonde hair, blue eyes) while there still being much more variations in the white population than in the black population. I'm curious how many white people there are on earth vs how many black people there are, and other races. A couple google searches didn't give me any easy finds
  - user982 6y ago
    > Ok but that can still be true (blonde hair, blue eyes) while there still being much more variations in the white population than in the black population. Even the man who coined "Caucasian" as a racial category recognized that there was more physical variance among African populations and individuals than compared with Europeans.
    - Gibbon1 6y ago
      I think there is by far more mitochondrial DNA variations inside Africa than outside.
  - claudeganon 6y ago
    That’s because “white” and “black” are loose, shifting, ideological constructions with little basis in the scientific reality of human genetic variation. Many “white people” weren’t considered “white” until fairly recently and Africa actually has more human genetic variation than anywhere else.

chillacy 6y ago

I recall being amused maybe 3 years ago when I took a picture of two friends, one with dark skin, one with light skin, and the camera choose to expose for the darker skin. He looked fine, the lighter skin friend looked like snow lit by headlights. Completely washed out. The camera settings and background lighting make a big difference.

andromeduck 6y ago
Was this on a DSLR/MILC? My Sony seems to do this sometimes when I have a very dark and very light subject outside but it's usually fine in RAW.
- mschuster91 6y ago
  On my A7S2 I simply use the exposure correction wheel in such situations - or use the exposure series function so I can mess around with HDR later in Photoshop.
  - andromeduck 6y ago
    Yeah I usually just use exposure comp too, it works pretty well most of the time but candids when everyone's moving and the background is changing can be pretty hard without a fill flash to help out a bit. Thank god for iso invariance though.
dingaling 6y ago
Which is why photographers ignore autoexposure and instead meter on a known reference such as an 18% grey card, or green grass.
- WorldMaker 6y ago
  I learned that one convention group I'm a part of converged on very visible glossy white badge cards not just because it is easy to sharpie names visibly on (in classic "Hello my name is" style), but also out of a request from the photography group as it is a very useful meter reference visible in almost every photo of any group member. Seeing how many great photos come out of the event in sometimes very strange lighting conditions (as you might expect from an event that includes everything from brightly lit outdoors events to indoor conference spaces and theaters to rock show-lit concerts, and everything in between), I'd imagine that little metering trick is doing wonders.

aeturnum 6y ago

There are real technical challenges in producing photographs of both light and dark skin, but the focus on light skinned subjects have led to an accumulation of technical solutions. Computerized facial recognition has been progressing for something like 50 years, with each paper building on previous work. I suspect a parallel world where the dominant social group hard dark skin would explore different technical avenues, focus on ways of recognizing faces that lean less on tone, etc. Obviously it's hard to say with what we know now. Humans have difficulty recognizing cross-ethnic faces, however I don't think dark skinned people are worse at recognizing same-ethnic faces than light skinned people. To me that suggests our social history is more to blame than some fundimental quality of skin tone.

mwcampbell 6y ago

But does the reason matter when the result is discrimination against people through no fault of their own?

raxxorrax 6y ago
Please discriminate against me too if that means facial recognition isn't working.
- krisoft 6y ago
  That’s not necessarily what you want. “not working” can manifest itself in false positive matches too. Cue “all X people look the same” stupidness. And the truth is, the danger zone is when the algo is somewhat ok, but a few percents worse on the discriminated group. If it were obviously stupidly bad (like for example any two black people are a positive match according to it) then people will disregard it. But if its just slightly bad thats harder to notice and suddenly your loan/car rental is rejected because the security system says you look too much like a specific known fraudster. And of course they wont even tell you that thats the reason, because security.
  - raxxorrax 6y ago
    I worked in imaging for medical diagnostic support and dark complexions are just plainly more difficult to analyse because of restricted illumination times and limited contrast. Sensors got much better in recent years though. The indications in question were extremely rare for black people on the other hand. Another use case was the detection of Vitiligo, which is significantly more easy on black people. There was a great demand for therapies because patients are stigmatized for different reasons, especially in Africa because the symptoms can look similar to some deadly diseases. There is a lot of discrimination in imaging, but it doesn't have to do with race and more with the creation of binary images. As for facial recognition. I see some use cases for convenience, but it would be far more effective to disallow widespread application because of the numerous unsolved problems. So I see the move from IBM positively, even if they continue their work. In the end I believe face reg to be possible without bias, but I don't have these propped up security needs.

pfranz 6y ago

It goes even deeper than that. If you look at the history of photography, film, and television you'll see a bias towards white skin tones that standards have been built up around. Just looking at "leader ladies" or common reference images there isn't a bunch of diversity. In practice I've heard cinematographers and photographers bring it up around filming different ethnicities. It starts with changing the exposure, but means you have to spend more attention towards color reproduction. This can extend beyond the film or image sensor to biasing lighting equipment, defaults, standards, and thresholds. Looking through the literature you'll see things like, "the design decisions in the NTSC’s test images effectively biased the format toward rendering white people as more lifelike than other races" https://sterneworks.org/Mulvin-Sterne-Scenes.pdf https://sterneworks.org/Mulvin-Sterne-Scenes.pdf I'm mostly familiar with the history in the US. I'm earnestly curious about how other countries accommodated these types of things as they adopted the technologies.

dnautics 6y ago
It's deeper than that. The chemicals used in analog color photography didn't have a dye profile that could capture people of color effectively until the 80s.
- lallysingh 6y ago
  I'm guessing that nobody cared to try.
- sangnoir 6y ago
  Even deeper- Kodak only started putting effort to get the process right in the 70s after customers complained about poor color reproduction[1] in wood grain and chocolate 1. https://petapixel.com/2015/09/19/heres-a-look-at-how-color-film-was-originally-biased-toward-white-people/ https://petapixel.com/2015/09/19/heres-a-look-at-how-color-f...
- solarkraft 6y ago
  I suspect it to be deeper than that: The relevant people didn't think it was worth it to invest all that much into developing it.

TuringNYC 6y ago

If there are technical challenges which would produced bias results...perhaps the answer is to not release the product. Perhaps do more R&D or more training on broader samples until one has a better product to release?

xupybd 6y ago
I don't think they are releasing products to make the world a better place. After all this tech is very dangerous. I don't the the ethics of racial bias are factored in to the decision making at these companies. This is one bias I think benefits folks with dark skin. I'd love to be in the group that doesn't get recognised by this terrifying tech.