Comment by Rjevski
8 years ago
Most likely it’s an issue with contrast and overall darker skin colour.
Can be solved by illuminating the face with IR though, which should work across all ethnicities.
8 years ago
Most likely it’s an issue with contrast and overall darker skin colour.
Can be solved by illuminating the face with IR though, which should work across all ethnicities.
Yes, but then you need special equipment rather than standard cameras (that usually filter IR); which would prove the point that it's about physical limitations rather than racism.
The racism comes from saying "We recognise human faces" and then not recognising a significant proportion of humans.
That's not racism, that's laziness. Or perhaps just being a bad engineer, if you want to be more cynical about it.
It's not that hard to find both conscious and subconscious examples of systemic or individual racism. Engineers taking the easy path with webcam facial recognition is probably not a good one and serves only to give more fuel to those who claim people jump to the racism cry too quickly.
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Most cheap cameras actually don't filter out IR; it often shows up as blue or purple. You can use this fact to see if an IR remote is working -- just shine it at your cellphone camera or webcam. Whether there's enough IR sensitivity to be able to illuminate a face is another question.