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Rite Aid facial recognition misidentified Black, Latino and Asian people as ‘likely’ shoplifters
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2023
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I'm no expert but I'm pretty sure computers can't organically learn racism.
That was programmed in by somebody right?
🤖 POOR SHOPPERS ARE JUST AS TALENTED AND BRIGHT AS WHITE SHOPPERS
Racism in, racism out
People accidentally program computers to be racist all the time. It’s a perpetual problem in AI and image recognition.
Not that I’m going to go out in a limb protecting the people making the “likely shoplifter” AI. Everyone knows what results their bosses want.
What probably happens with those facial recognition programs is that the people who make them neglect actually training them at recognizing poc (they use tiny sample sizes compared to white people), which causes the program to work as if everyone who is not white is the same person.
They're gonna end up having to do the thing from movies and video games where the camera actively aims at people and shoots infrared light to do a LIDAR scan of people's faces to process. And it's gonna be so slow that they will install checkpoint gates where you have to stand there while it scans your face. And they're gonna have an AI robot lady voice (so they don't pay any royalties) say beep boop you're clear to go.
It's definitely just the thing where poor people are more likely to steal but women and minorities are poorer than white people so minorities/women are more likely to steal than white people before adjusting for income level
Just as systemic racism isn't the result of one individual with bad intent that could be taken out to fix it, AI isn't any different than any other bureaucratic tool. They get trained on racist data, but the very goal of going after "likely shiplifters" is a racist end. Anyone that works retail knows how often managers are calling over radio asking you to keep an eye out for a black guy wearing a shirt. AI isn't really introducing new racism where less existed before, it just creates an excuse for the racism that it was totally the computer and not vague guidelines about "suspicious activity" we get told to look for with the complete understanding they mean black people who park too close to the store.