Crime & Justice

Bots Are Terrible at Recognizing Black Faces. Let's Keep it That Way.

BANOPTICON
opinion
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Photo Illustration by Lyne Lucien/The Daily Beast

Color photography was optimized for light skin. Facial recognition technologies are just carrying on color film’s historical non-registry of black people.

In a country where crime prevention already associates blackness with inherent criminality, why would we fight to make our faces more legible to a system designed to police us?

I haven’t watched too many dystopia science fiction movies, but I have seen more than one where the protagonists attempt to somehow...

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