The accuracy of facial recognition has improved drastically since ‘deep learning’ techniques were introduced into the field about a decade ago but there’s still a long way to go. A few years ago – the world’s largest scientific computing society, the Association for Computing Machinery in New York City, urged a suspension of private and government use of facial-recognition technology, because of “clear bias based on ethnic, racial, gender, and other human characteristics”, which it said injured the rights of individuals in specific demographic groups. So this is clearly a big issue
People in the US city of New York are subject to “shocking” mass surveillance through facial recognition technology cameras, with the invasive technology especially trained on areas of the city with greater concentrations of non-white residents, new research by Amnesty International and partners has revealed today. The new analysis – published as part of a global Ban The Scan campaign – shows how the New York Police Department’s vast surveillance operation particularly affects people already targeted for stop-and-frisk across the city’s five boroughs. In the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens the research shows
Up to £23 million in government funding will create more AI and data conversion courses, helping young people from underrepresented groups including women, black people and people with disabilities join the UK’s world-leading Artificial Intelligence (AI) industry. Up to two thousand scholarships for master AI conversion courses, which enable graduates to do further study courses in the field even if their undergraduate course is not directly related, will create a new generation of experts in data science and AI. The UK has a long history in AI, from codebreaker Alan
Cambridge-based post-seed accelerator Deeptech Labs has announced its autumn deeptech startup cohort.
New York City is making a bold move by introducing a new law to combat race and gender bias in hiring processes when businesses use artificial intelligence tools to screen out job candidates. Under the new law – employers in the city will be banned from using automated employment decision tools to screen job candidates unless the technology has been subject to a “bias audit” conducted a year before using the tool. The new act passed the measure on November 10 and it takes effect on January 2, 2023. A PricewaterhouseCoopers 2017 study found
A tech company that provides human resource training to large corporations has just been revealed to be using white actors to portray people of color within sessions about diversity, equity, and inclusion. During the training sessions, there were reportedly scenarios where Child Protective Services removed a child from a Black family and in each case, white actors played the roles of the Black characters. In other VR simulations, white actors played characters of Asian descent, and neurotypical adults played autistic children. Mursion, a corporate education company that has clients including Coco cola and Starbucks, has
Zindi is the first data science competition platform in Africa. It hosts an entire data science ecosystem of scientists, engineers, academics, companies, NGOs, governments, and institutions to solve Africa’s most pressing problems. The company recently raised a $1 million seed round, led by San-Francisco-based VC firm Shakti, with Launch Africa, Founders Factory Africa, and five35. How does the startup work? The firm announces challenges and invites its community of data scientists to take part in solution-finding competitions. Participating data scientists submit their solutions, and the winner gets a cash prize. The competition was
Black Lives Matter (BLM) co-founder Opal Tometi has urged the tech sector to take robust action against perpetuating racism in systems such as facial recognition. “A lot of the algorithms, a lot of the data is racist,” U.S. activist Tometi, who co-founded BLM in 2013, told Reuters on the sidelines of Lisbon’s Web Summit. “We need tech to truly understand every way it (racism) shows up in the technologies they are developing,” she said. Her comments come just a day after Facebook announced it was shutting down its facial recognition
Facebook is planning to shut down its face-recognition system and delete faceprints of more than 1 billion people. At the present moment – more than a third of Facebook’s daily active users have opted to have their faces recognized by the social network’s system. That’s about 640 million people. But according to AP – it recently began scaling back its use of facial recognition after introducing it more than a decade ago. The move comes years after organizations and people of color complained about how problematic AI and facial recognition
Byron Allen, the 1980s comedian-turned-media-mogul, aims to acquire Tegna Inc in an $8 billion deal. The news comes months after it was reported that Allen’s Weather Channel’s business had taken a hit due to the pandemic as the TV advertising dried up, leading to piling debt load. Tegna, formerly owned by Gannett Co Inc, is a chain of 64 TV and radio stations that span 50 markets across the U.S. The deal could significantly boost Allen Media Group, which has amassed 33 local TV network affiliate stations. Allen — who came to
