Inequitable algorithms: Facial recognition’s alarming pattern of misidentifying Black individuals sparks calls for reform

By Stacy M. BrownNNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent (NNPA NEWSWIRE) – Recent research conducted by Scientific American Online supported fears that facial recognition technology (FRT) can worsen racial inequities in policing. The research found that law enforcement agencies that use automated facial recognition disproportionately arrest Black people. The report’s authors stated that they believe these results come from factors that include the “lack of Black faces in the algorithms’ training data sets, a belief that these programs are infallible, and a tendency of officers’ own biases to magnify these issues.” FRT was again cast in a negative light after the arrest of a 61-year-old grandfather, who is now suing Sunglass Hut’s parent company after the store’s facial recognition technology mistakenly identified him as a robber. Harvey Eugene Murphy Jr. was subsequently held in jail, where he says he was sexually assaulted, according to a lawsuit. The robbery occurred at a Sunglass Hut store in Houston, Texas, when two gun-wielding bandits stole thousands of dollars in cash and merchandise. Houston police identified Murphy as a suspect, even though he lived in California.& They arrested Murphy when he returned to Texas to renew his driver’s license. His lawsuit claims that, while in...