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RACIAL BIAS


A web video posted by Chukwuemeka Afigbo who works for Facebook shows this soap dispenser delivering soap to white hands but it doesn’t recognise his black skin. It appears that the higher the person is on the Fitzpatrick scale (a measure of skin tone), the more difficult it is for light to bounce back. However the real issue is that the design team did not pick this up and rework the sensors to allow for a variety of skin colours.


The same racial bias has been found in wearable fitness trackers and heart rate monitors with, perhaps, more dire consequences. Apple’s initial iWatch pulse measurement sensor failed to recognise some dark- skinned people and did not work with shades of red or black tattoos. This also had the effect of making the watch deactivate Apple Pay because it thought it has lost contact with the user’s skin. 


Another YouTube video featured the HP Media Smart laptop. An African American man and his white female co-worker tested the face detection and tracking functions of the built-in webcam. The HP laptop detected the white colleague’s face and followed her as she moved within the frame, whereas it failed to recognise the black face