This week we examine the early biological theories on crime. While the early theories are long abandoned in criminology, there is a surprising resurgence of these pseudo-scientific ideas. Read this article – The disturbing junk science of craniometry is enjoying a resurgence. Should we be worried that the technology of facial recognition relies on these outdated ideas?
Please leave at least three comments. One is your original contribution. And two comments are you replies to your classmates. Deadline: 10/9/22
[…] Discussion Forum 6: Early Biological Theories and Modern Technologies […]
Don’t forget about this discussion!
Yes, I do not solely think technology can be the solution for all of our problems, but it is inevitable because in our day and age technology is only going to get stronger and more prominent. Technology can malfunction and sometimes give the wrong information when using facial recognition. I find it shocking that an A.I can be biased towards certain groups of people and THAT’s what scientist believe we should rely on for the future of technology and I think its uncanny. I think there is definitely a more reasonable way to go about this rather than using facial recognition which categorizes and places people in social and political groups based off their skull and facial features.
Hello Ejiro,
You made great points about why people should be concerned over these facial recognition tactics because thing can go wrong.
Hi Ejiro, how are you? thank you for sharing your respond . And you were very clear and it was easy to understand your points and I can agree that they can come up with a better situation than facial recognition.
Hi Ejiro
you are on point with this discussion. Technology is taking over and doing the job as a human being and that’s the problem right there. I believe that certain thing should not be slowly depending on technology to get done.
Hello Ejiro, I really like the points that you made. I agree 100%. I was thinking similar ideas and your other ideas were something i never thought about and now i definitely agree.
Hello Ejrio, I agree with what you said about how technology can’t be the solution to all our problems, sometimes it takes some human work to get what you intended to do which I feel is a good reasonable way to get around things.
Hello,
I agree that technology alone cannot be the solution for our problems.
This is a great response technology is not a solution to all problems, and it’s really growing with this new generation, I’m scared for them.
Hey Ejiro, I Love the points you made here. As a more developed technological world, we depend greatly on technology. To say technology isn’t the answer to all of the world’s problems is a great statement because it doesn’t. I feel it can sometimes make things more difficult.
I agree with your first sentences to a certain degree, only because technology has solved a lot of issues and human errors.
Yes, we should be worried about these outdated ideas, especially whit Craniometry which is the study of the human skull. It is a pseudoscience that has been used in the past to justify racism and sexism. We should be concerned that this technology is being used to target marginalized groups. Also, Craniometry is based on the idea that the shape of a person’s skull can be used to determine their intelligence, personality, and even their race. facial recognition technology is often used for security purposes, such as identifying criminals or terrorists. However, this technology is not perfect. It often leads to false positives, particularly for people of color. This means that innocent people are more likely to be targeted and searched by the police. There is a growing movement to ban the use of facial recognition technology. We should be concerned that this technology is being used to target marginalized groups. I think we need to demand that our government and law enforcement agencies stop using this technology until it can be perfected.
Hello Luis,
Yes, false positives are a thing and is very prone to occur.
Hi Luis, how are you? what a great response I really like all points you focus on. Your writing was very clear. And yes I do agree with you about the ideas of Craniometry which study the human skull. And most of the time innocent people always get targeted by police.
Hello Luis. You made some great points in this writing. Technology can make mistakes that can lead to false positives and i agree that can be very dangerous. I agree with your ideas.
Hello Luis, I agree with what you said about banning the use of facial recognition technology before it gets out of hand, I do agree that it also should be worked on a bit more and collect good results before using it again.
Hi Luis, I completely agree False positives would only further the system’s bias in racial profiling and that it shouldn’t be used. I’m not sure if it will ever be perfected since they’re still using craniometry which is an issue in itself, I feel this problem could only be solved if they can develop another way to profile people in an unbiased way.
Often time when we sit here and create things, we expect for them to last for years. Though nobody has ever sat back and took fault for the mess up these techniques have brought. 3 men were wrongfully jailed in 2021 due to these faulty. Yet they are still awaiting trial and review. Might we point out all these men are black. Where was the companies that created these when google would use facial software to tie black people to monkeys? We should be scared and i agree.
Institutional racism and misinformation, racial discrimination in law enforcement, privacy, a shortage of explicit consent and accountability, mass surveillance, data breaches, plus ineffective legal support are the most important ethical issues with facial recognition technology.
Hello Ninoska, I agree with you. just when you thought that our Justice system is bad wait until facial recognition technology takes over
Agreed, I feel like certain situations facial recognition helps us but it also makes damages.
I agree with you this issue especially in law enforcement is crazy.
data breaches are a huge problem with todays technology especially when there’s important information stored on specific accounts.
In the article “ the disturbing junk of science of craniometry is enjoying a resurgence” the technology company launched its diversity in faces. Yes we should be worried about this new technology because it’s still a risk since it’s new we don’t know much but also it’s an easy way to create a metric to simplify the world so that can be quantified and computationally processed. The biological determinists in the 19th century. The issue is producing this type of race to have ever more precise and granular identification.
Everything in life requires a risk, especially when developing newer technology devices.
Yes, we should be worried about the new facial recognition for several different reasons. In the article the facial recognition picked up majority of black people and darker skin people rather than light skin. The percentage on the facial recognition when tested on people showed that black and darker people had the highest percentage than white and lighter skin tone. It is unsafe and scary to have such technology that seem to only target one race over the other. Personally, I do not think this would be a good idea since we are living in a time where racism is blatant, and people of color are being treated unfair by the police and the court systems. We cannot depend on no facial recognition to solve a crime or to determine whether someone is qualified for a job. Human interaction is the way to go in my opinion.
I understand where you’re coming from, But I feel like facial recognition and technology now has helped even more to solve the unsolved cases from before where there was no technology.
Hey Mark, I agree with your statement not to mention the fact that craniometry back then was used to be able to tell superiority and inferiority. But I do think the use of technology to solve and understand crimes can be useful if used properly and programmed correctly, hopefully, this method can be perfected or completely changed in the near future to avoid these unethical profilings.
I believe that the face recognition technology system should cause us concern. Facial recognition can result in invasion of privacy and include false information about discrimination based on age and ethnicity of anyone with technology in their hands. However, I also think it’s beneficial in a lot of ways that can help solve unsolved cases and apply more to researching for possible suspects. It can also jeopardize those innocent people
because since this technology runs on a bias system data it simply distinguishes the age , race , information of this person or persons , the racial profiling that this causes and applies when things are researched are push to the extent to overlook.
Facial recognition resulting in invasion of privacy is a good point.
I would say that we should be worried that the technology of facial recognition relies on these outdated ideas. This is because since it can pick out diversity it can identify people of color.In society there is still a lot of racism and discrimination so i believe that this technology can be used in a negative way. In the text it says ” IBM has played a role in a number of these dark episodes. The company famously developed a system of punch cards that it leased to the Nazi regime, allowing the Nazis to identify and track the Jewish population.” This is just one example of how technology recognition can be used in a negative way. History will continue to repeat itself and with even more advanced technology it will continue doing this more frequently.
Yes I do think that we should worry about these facial recognitions on these outdated ideas because of how inaccurate it can be, the AI systems are created by design to show what the real world views people as and it can create some frustration or anger towards the AI that are suppose to make things easier for us and not hard or complexed when we need to use them in our daily lives as technology grows.
I believe we should be worried that technology relies on outdated ideas because the systems identify black people as “negroids” and “criminals.” Since the system misses a large portion of black women and it is taught to “see” from humans, it can be racist and ineffective.
While I do like the idea of the use of technology to identify people in order to solve/prevent crimes, we should definitely worry that outdated ideas are used to identify people. Craniometry is extremely outdated and problematic since these measurements are used to categorize genetically inherited traits belonging to particular groups which makes it very biased. I don’t think it’s a good idea that companies like IBM are trying to revive this type of technology, there are so many cons than pros about this technique. In this day of age, there is much more diversity so it is only going to make it harder to accurately distinguish people, especially if using an outdated metric system.
I think we should be about facial recognition and according to the article when it comes to darker-skinned women, AI systems that have error rates of no more than 1% for lighter-skinned men can miss up to 35% of the time. That is a problem, Facial recognition is increasingly used to police public spaces. I like the idea of technology I think it is useful but not like this. which are horribly exposed when black people are labeled as “negroids” and criminals by computer vision systems. This is discrimination, and it raises the question of whether black and brown people will be specifically harmed by the use of facial recognition technology in order to increase their criminal risk.
Hey Ariel, I agree with you that this is a huge issue when the government wants to use something that is computer-based and still discriminates. Unfortunately, many young minorities already face discrimination issues every day. To utilize this would just further justify their reasoning.
When introducing new technology to policing or to other law enforcement agencies, we must always question the potential that it may have to certain communities.
I agree with you Ariel, I also like the idea of using technology to improve our way of living. But sometimes this same technology could be damaging to society. Because like you say it is bias and this could create inequality among us.
We should be worried about the way that technology identifies people because these AI programs are made by people which will always have errors. According to the article there are racial biases that are grouping people as criminals. It is similar to the struggles that content creators of color run into in the alghtorim when posting their content online and that there were times that their content was deleted even when it followed guidelines. I also believe there is a lot of lookism being programed into the AI programs have carry the prejudices of the programmers as well.
I like how you used the example of how content creators who are people of color sometimes get their content removed on social media and when others do the same there isn’t the same consequences. This is a great comparison because it shows how technology is already creating inequality.
I agree. AI is still being created by Humans. As humans we make common if not the most ridiculous errors known to man. It should not be made so advanced where we use this technology as a substitute for human kind. Maybe as a way for a helping hand but not fully to reciprocate the same knowledge humans are fully and capable of achieving.
Yes. AI is still being created by Humans. As humans we make common if not the most ridiculous errors known to man. It should not be made so advanced where we use this technology as a substitute for human kind. Maybe as a way for a helping hand but not fully to reciprocate the same knowledge humans are fully and capable of achieving.
Most people would agree to disagree when it comes to facial recognition. Some may feel that it is great to have something in place that can take the guesswork of who is who. I have worked for retailers that use facial recognition for people apprehended in the store for stealing. I have often seen that same system fail by alerting us to the wrong person. Using a system that classifies anyone other than Caucasians and labeling them as ” Negroids” and criminals is defiantly not something I would believe is helpful to be used on a public level, especially not for law enforcement.
Like you’ve highlighted there are pros and cons to facial recognition that must be heavily discussed
Technology is the key to future success, but mostly the downfall of humanity. The main reason why its the downfall is because it’s replacing a lot of opportunities that we have. Mostly our jobs are being taken from technology, also facial recognition is a huge problem, especially if it gets into the wrong hands people can make fake id’s of you.
I agree it is the downfall. Nowadays we are focused on the internet so much we have forgotten what its like to live a normal human life. Its like we’re brainwashed to focus on our technical advances.
Yes, I think we should be worried that the technology of facial recognition relies on these outdated ideas because it creates a bias idea that the idea that skull shapes and facial features are indicative of people’s character or social identity. I think that this is untrue because skull shapes nor facial features should have to determine what our behaviors are. For example according the article The disturbing junk science of craniometry is enjoying a resurgence it states, “computer vision systems identify black people as “negroids” and criminals.” This is just one of the many reasons why facial recognition isn’t reliable to use.
I totally agree with you facial recognition is not reliable at all.
Yes, i think we should he worried and we’ve been worried. I dont strongly believe that recognizing people should not be based on technology. Facial recognition relys on things that people can change. It may sound unrealistic but what if these people receive skull fractures? What if they receive surgery? This is unsafe for many cases. Jan 6 2021 Nijaar parks was arrested and jailed got a crime he did not commit due to the fault of facial recognition. Robert williams, & Micheal oliver. These men were all jailed due to the fault of A.I the government so badly trusts. Technology is great it has advanced is extreme ways beyond our own understanding. At some point we have to touch base on what the real world is.
Yes we should be worried because there is a lot of racial profiling going on although technology will continue to get better right now its not there so to use a system that can cause many errors is only going to do more damage than good.