Federal study confirms facial recognition is a biased mess

We all knew facial-recognition technology was flawed, just perhaps not this flawed. 

A new study from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, published on Dec. 19, lays out in painstaking detail how facial-recognition tech misidentifies the elderly, young, women, and people of color at rates higher than that of white men. In other words, more at risk populations are also the ones more likely to suffer false matches and any associated legal troubles that follow. 

Just how bad is it? Let's let the NIST study authors explain. 

"We found false positives to be higher in women than men, and this is consistent across algorithms and datasets," they wrote. "We found elevated false positives in the elderly and in children; the effects were larger in the oldest and youngest, and smallest in middle-aged adults." Read more...