Facial Recognition software will do more Harm to Minorities, Colored people and Women- According to Reports

The Facial Recognition software from Amazon is slowly gathering more users from various industries. Amazon claims that its facial recognition software will benefit the masses owing to the success it saw when Facial Recognition software was used in India to find 3000 missing children and that Facebook uses Facial recognition to help the Visually impaired persons.

But the truth of the matter is, in case of the first scenario, where 3000 missing children were identified and located within 4 days, it would be a grave injustice to undermine the efforts of India’s Police personnel who put in their body and mind in this mission.

With regard to the second scenario where Facebook is being mentioned as to how it uses Facial recognition to help the Visually impaired, the problem here is, citing Facebook example would only mean to discredit the entire idea of justifying the employment this tool.

For reasons that given the reputation of Facebook in stealing and selling personal information and given the credibility of its CEO being questionable in every ethical sense, makes eyebrows raise specially when security and data are concerned.

There are a few facts to be concerned when Industries employ Facial recognition software. Given the mess they create. Foremost, 40% of all facial recognition identified by Amazon had showed false positive.

This is huge, especially if you are going to be condemning someone merely on the evidence of having his/her face on a software recognition software.

Do you know, Google Photos aspiration took a hit when its Algorithm identified two Black people as Gorillas, bringing hard feeling and remorse to the concerned individuals and what did Google do to rectify? A simple apology saying that there was mistake in its Algorithm. But the truth of the matter is, can a mere sorry or an Apology be able to wipe out the pain, and humiliation that resulted from such inadequacies?

Apple which boasts of using the most advanced technologies also bit the dust when it’s IPHONE X was unlocked by a woman using her face, who in fact was apparently a friend of the person who owned the Phone.

The news was global but never came into the mainstream media for the fear of Apple stocks being hit out of the baseline.

The most alarming incident would be case of Jimmy Gomez, a California Democrat, and is Hispanic origin was gruesomely picked by Amazon’s facial recognition system, to be a potential criminal.

If this would be the situation for a diplomat and a lawmaker then what could be imagined of those who are average citizens struggling to make ends meet.

From the cases and scenarios that are prevalent all over with regard to Facial reading it has been universally accepted that the Technology fails miserably it comes to Reading People of Color and more so specially women.

Though Amazon software down plays all claims of inadequacies yet still they do not offer a convincing explanation for the innumerable slips and inaccuracies that the system has thrown out.

Just to reinstate how Amazon facial recognition is a total failure, the following study was carried out on Facial recognition systems made by Microsoft, Face++ and IBM.

All of them had a harder time identifying the gender of dark-skinned women like African-Americans compared with white men.

 35% of dark-skinned women were misidentified. The study was carried out by MIT-research scholars.

There are calls and expressing of Fears from several quarters with regard to the discrimination practices that Facial recognition software would reinstate and more so the amount of injustice that could be meted out to the innocent because of their skin color.

These are trying times, and we don’t want any individual to be condemned/penalized or victimized because of faulty facial reading, more so when it comes to colored people and women. For it is our responsibility to safe guard their rights and liberties.- Independent Reporting.