
Atlanta Asks Google Whether It Targeted Black Homeless People - Donaldmax
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/04/technology/google-facial-recognition-atlanta-homeless.html
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taneq
Damned if they do, damned if they don't.

As far as I can see, their options are:

\- Keep using datasets largely made up of white college kids and stock photo
models, and be accused of racism because their image recognition systems don't
work so well for other demographics

\- Specifically seek out other demographics to broaden their datasets, and be
accused of racism for it

\- ...stop trying to make any kind of system that deals with images of humans?

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yabadabadoes
I'm not sure its that slim, they have users across virtually all demographics
(or visually indistiguishable from all demographics) who are capable of
(documented) consent and benefit from their products. I don't think you need a
bonafide off-the-grid person to be able to correct for off the grid
demographics.

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deogeo
Headline: Google shuns homeless minorities, claims they are too mentally
deficient to be "capable of consent"

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yabadabadoes
They interact with a sizeable portion of those communities as they interact
with everyone. I would be pissed if they came to me offline and asked for my
consent to fill in their data gaps on the presumption that I look too
old/stupid to be one of their users capable of engaging online and accepting
the ToS. I would also be pissed if they assumed some other group that fits
existing prejudices of contractors was a better aproximation instead of by any
form of normal sampling.

It is simply a false dichotomy that their data samples are either white
college kids or whoever they seek offline as the presumed opposite.

It is more work to get a reasonable dataset instead of a bad one and one or
two patches. I think they can afford that work using their normal portal in a
way that isn't particularly controvesial aside from the public debates that
should occur in general.

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jcims
Sorry I love my Dutch extended family but there's absolutely no way I would
involve them or any other company outside the US in such a touchy project as
this.

Speaking specifically of my family and some colleagues from western Europe,
they just don't seem to have an appreciation for how high strung equality and
race relations are in America and regularly say shit that makes me wince (and
laugh, usually). Having a team from the Netherlands run this, I'm completely
unsurprised that this rather tone deaf but profoundly utilitarian and
effective approach is where they landed.

An American company may or may not have picked an ethically superior approach
but they almost certainly would have picked an optically superior one.

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pieterhg
It's not "a team from the Netherlands". Randstad is a $22.5 billion global
provider of HR services and the second largest staffing organization in the
world.

It's a multinational company with branches everywhere. It's only Dutch by its
origins and HQ.

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jcims
Oh. Well, I guess they just screwed up then. :)

