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An essay titled the State of Black America 2018 noted how the digital revolution is increasingly leaving their black consumers behind. “Facial-recognition systems are more likely either to misidentify or fail to identify African Americans than other races, errors that could result in innocent citizens being marked as suspects in crimes,” according to the Atlantic.Īs technology becomes more advanced, so does the scope and harm of these blunders.

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Yet the ramifications run much deeper than shoddy cell phones now that facial recognition software is being introduced into policing.

I'm a black woman and I've even been locked out of my Surface because Windows Hello couldn’t detect my face. From iPhone’s face unlock not being able to differentiate between two colleagues in China to Google Photos mistakenly tagging two black friends in a selfie as gorillas, algorithms still fail at recognizing and distinguishing people of color. Specifically, facial recognition software has consistently shown racial bias when identifying faces. It is also infamous for it’s stark lack of diversity which has been nicknamed its “Achilles’ heel,” according to CNBC. The issue extends throughout many facets of technology. Silicon Valley, located in northern San Francisco, is a global epicenter for innovation and prestige in technology. 'The less diversity there is in a workplace environment, the more likely major design flaws will be present that only affect people of color.” Racial Bias in Tech The less diversity there is in a workplace environment, the more likely major design flaws will be present that only affect people of color,” Harris said.

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“If you have an office full of white people, whatever products that come out of that office are more likely to be geared more towards white people. The soap dispenser was created by a company called Technical Concepts, which unintentionally made a discriminatory soap dispenser because no one at the company thought to test their product on dark skin.Īccording to Alec Harris, a fourth year Manufacturing Engineering Technology major and the Pre-Collegiate Initiative Chair for National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) chapter, this is an endemic problem within the tech industry. This epic design flaw may seem hilarious on the internet, but demonstrates a major issue with many technology-based companies: diversity. Which means that dark-skinned restroom users will have to skip washing their hands with this not-so-sensitive soap dispenser.

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Darker skin tones absorb more light, thus enough light isn't reflected back to the sensor to activate the soap dispenser. The dispenser used near-infrared technology to detect hand motions, an article on Mic read. The invisible light is reflected back from the skin which triggers the sensor. In a video at a Marriott hotel, an automatic soap dispenser is shown unable to detect a black customer’s hand. “Is this soap dispenser racist?” was the question that became an internet sensation.

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