A short 2009 amateur video showing an HP MediaSmart webcam whose face tracking follows a white face but fails to track a black face. The uploader presents it as humorous.
Why Hacker News points people here: HN cites it as the standard example of algorithmic bias in face detection and of how skewed training data produces biased tech.
“I also have some concerns of inadvertent "software racism". See for example, this video”HN comment, 2013
“I also have some concerns of inadvertent "software racism". See for example, this video”
Webcam failing to track dark-skinned faces
Full comment
Given the rate of false positives when "cold hits" are used with DNA databases, facial recognition (which is presumably higher entropy than DNA) has the potential to send a lot of innocent people to jail. I also have some concerns of inadvertent "software racism". See for example, this video: this video . Obviously facial recognition isn't inherently incapable of recognizing people of different races, but if it's designed and calibrated on subjects of one race, it won't necessarily work well for subjects of different races. The last thing we want is a facial recognition database that thinks e.g. all Arabs look alike. And of course, there are a ton of ways that it can be thwarted easily and inconspicuously, even if it works very well. Are all surveillance cameras going to be fitted with IR filters to ensure that a bright IR LED necklace doesn't blind them? And how hard is it for a criminal to hire a makeup artist?
Cites itsplintercellJul 2014Full comment
I can't get it to work(it detects my white shirt, the shoulder area as a face, but not my actual face). Is this a repetition of this: this video
Cites itgus_massaOct 2014
“There was a horror story about a face recognition software that didn't detect someone with black skin.”
Face tracking failing on dark skin
Full comment
I'd like to ignore the privacy aspect. I want to discuss the false positive problem. Is the technology reliable to have a low false positive rate? Probably face recognition is good enough to classify the photograph of your friends in Facebook, and the friends of your friends. It has to choose a person in a set of ~100. What happens when someone is falsely identified? Is the suspect released after a ID check or he is moved to the police station to a full check? Can this be a proxy for racial profiling? There was a horror story about a face recognition software that didn't detect someone with black skin. This can have the reverse problem. this video
Cites itmistercowApr 2015
“So they might have a "racist HP webcam”
Full comment
Apparently optical heart rate monitors also often fail on dark skin (or have to shine a brighter light, so they run out of battery faster). So they might have a "racist HP webcam" ( this video ) situation on their hands.
Cites itSteltekOct 2020
“ten years ago, computers didn't think black people were humans.”
Full comment
My first thought was about the diversity of faces used in the demo and how ten years ago, computers didn't think black people were humans. this video But after that, I was reminded of the paranoia (or not?) around Zoom and that, for an extreme example, the CCP was mining and generating facial fingerprints and social networks using video calls. It seems like this technology is the same concept except put to a useful purpose.
Cites itsaltminerNov 2021
“It was HP”
HP webcam failing to detect dark faces
Full comment
> I can't remember which company it was that launched a camera with face identification features, but that didn't recognize any face that wasn't lilly white like every single engineer that worked at that company It was HP this video
Cites itshadowgovtMay 2023
“HP computers are racist" for every meaningful (i.e. user-experienced) definition of the concept.”
Cites HP webcam as example of biased tech
Full comment
Functions are tools for humans to cause the computer to achieve a desired output. If the function isn't generating the desired output, change the function. We can talk all day about how the history of facial recognition has used things like the eye-nose-mouth T-shape or high-contrast contours to lock in on the target, but if at the end of the day the solution works for people with light skin and not people with dark skin, "HP computers are racist" for every meaningful (i.e. user-experienced) definition of the concept. (reference: this video )
