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I think your comment is a bit dismissive. Facebook is not the first to encounter this, it happened 6/7 years ago and they should have known better. Secondly, if

I think your comment is a bit dismissive. Facebook is not the first to encounter this, it happened 6/7 years ago and they should have known better. Secondly, if the Data Scientist working on this were all black, this would not have happened, just like the automatic soap dispensers in bathrooms.

marmshallow 5y ago
What’s this about soap dispensers?
- croes 5y ago
  FB had a soap dispenser that didn't recognize black people. https://gizmodo.com/why-cant-this-soap-dispenser-identify-dark-skin-1797931773 https://gizmodo.com/why-cant-this-soap-dispenser-identify-da...
  - nullc 5y ago
    When the video comes up, facebook displays a message that says it is "false information". (And when you click "why" you get a picture of Arabic text, which can't be copy/pasted into translation software) Shame on you for distributing false information, it's a good thing we have facebook protecting The Truth. /s
    - mardifoufs 5y ago
      The link says that it's partly false because it's an infrared sensor, that doesn't detect any skin color and isn't biased by virtue of not really making any decision. It just dispenses soap when the infrared sensor gets triggered. The problem is that according to the article black skin does not reflect infrared radiation very well (no idea if that's true, but that's the claim here) meaning it's more of a physical limitation than a "defect" as can be argued in the case of AI models. But the article also says that a counterargument could be that the existence of machines that aren't very suited to a big part of the population can be seen as proof of some latent Racism (to be more accurate, discrimination is closer to what's used in the article) whether intentional or not.
joebob42 5y ago
Why would that be true? I don't understand the argument that black people would have avoided this. From what I can tell the only fix here is a hardcoded workaround outside the net, or a substantially more powerful architecture.

marmshallow 5y ago

What’s this about soap dispensers?

croes 5y ago
FB had a soap dispenser that didn't recognize black people. https://gizmodo.com/why-cant-this-soap-dispenser-identify-dark-skin-1797931773 https://gizmodo.com/why-cant-this-soap-dispenser-identify-da...
- nullc 5y ago
  When the video comes up, facebook displays a message that says it is "false information". (And when you click "why" you get a picture of Arabic text, which can't be copy/pasted into translation software) Shame on you for distributing false information, it's a good thing we have facebook protecting The Truth. /s
  - mardifoufs 5y ago
    The link says that it's partly false because it's an infrared sensor, that doesn't detect any skin color and isn't biased by virtue of not really making any decision. It just dispenses soap when the infrared sensor gets triggered. The problem is that according to the article black skin does not reflect infrared radiation very well (no idea if that's true, but that's the claim here) meaning it's more of a physical limitation than a "defect" as can be argued in the case of AI models. But the article also says that a counterargument could be that the existence of machines that aren't very suited to a big part of the population can be seen as proof of some latent Racism (to be more accurate, discrimination is closer to what's used in the article) whether intentional or not.

joebob42 5y ago

Why would that be true? I don't understand the argument that black people would have avoided this. From what I can tell the only fix here is a hardcoded workaround outside the net, or a substantially more powerful architecture.