Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Racist Computers?


My favorite line: "I welcome responses to why the HP webcam does not pick up Negros."

Possible explanation here.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

That's interesting, although I highly doubt it was intentional. Or perhaps it's being used to drum up buzz for HP.

Reminds me of this story I read about racist shoppers:

http://thealbatross.ca/2009/11/online-holiday-shopping-makes-racism-easy-convenient/

bigcitylib said...

They're saying the camera doesn't pick up the contrast in tones on a black face (see link). But that begs the question: didn't they test the camera on anybody dark-skinned?

Skinny Dipper said...

Ouch! That's gotta hurt poor black Desi. Perhaps he needs a bandaid. Ouch! No black skin-toned band-aids.

This reminds me of my 1980's high school yearbook when many of the black students looked like shadows in the black-n-white "mug" shots. "Mug" is a yearbook term for head shot.

Reality Bites said...

It's likely quite dependent on the lighting conditions.

I'm quite fair and the software on my computer won't recognize me if the room light is too bright or too dark. Probably HP didn't test under varied lighting conditions.

This happened earlier this year on an episode of "Better Off Ted." The company installed face recognition security cameras that wouldn't recognize black employees, so they hired white people to shadow their black employees.

In Wanda's case I don't think the camera is tracking her. I think it's trying to get away from her.

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