8 ms·

> Similarly, I would not be surprised if a face recognition NN worked better on Europeans rather than Chinese, for the prima facie reason that they have more va

by HSO 10y ago

> Similarly, I would not be surprised if a face recognition NN worked better on Europeans rather than Chinese, for the prima facie reason that they have more variable facial features and other aspects like multiple hair colors other than black Hair color, yes, but facial feature variability? I think your perception of more variability in European faces than Chinese ones says more about where/how you grew up than about the actual variability. To someone who grew up in an Asian monoculture, without exposure to media with European faces, all Europeans would look alike too.

aangjie 10y ago
Err... I'm not so sure about this. I understand that as you grow up in one community, your brain networks/neurons specialize for distinguishing differences in facial features in that community more than in others. While I haven't seen enough chinese to argue, they have lesser facial feature variations, I can imagine how the algorithm defines facial features would be biased more towards the caucasian/European faces. So from the POV of the "facial feature detection" algorithm, European faces will have more variation in facial features than Chinese faces. Context: I grew up in southern india and spent most of my early years there, but travelled out to the northern India in the mid twenties. I can now say, I can see facial feature variations in the NE India folks(these folks have facial similarity with chinese) I see around now (I currently live in the south)
- GTP 10y ago
  >To someone who grew up in an Asian monoculture, without exposure to media with European faces, all Europeans would look alike too. I'm instead sure about this because of a funny incident that happened to my mother just a few years ago. She was standing near a pizzeria when a chinese waitress stepped out and said (translating from italian, sorry if I make some mistakes): waitress: "Take away?" my mother: "What?" waitress: "Take away?" my mother:"No, I haven't ordered anything" waitress: "You Italians! You look all alike!" EDIT: formatting
randyrand 10y ago
I imagine it's both.
- Nydhal 10y ago
  It's funny how racial bias always comes out in discussion about NN. It all depends on the training data and that's all there is to it. Yet somehow, some people tend to blame the models or the programmers for not correcting this "bias" that is not "supposed" to be there.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - wonnage 10y ago
    If the output of your fancy new NN classifies black people as gorillas it's absolutely the programmers' fault. It is useless for a large swathe of humanity, it creates a PR nightmare, etc. So nah, it's not funny.
    - jclos 10y ago
      It depends on how you define "programmers' fault". In this case it would more a case of needing more training data to correct the mistake, which may or may not be the programmer's fault.
  - Manishearth 10y ago
    Of course it can be the programmer's fault. Programming NNs is not just about picking an unbiased sample set of data, you need to help the NN know what it's looking for. As I've explained in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12759089 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12759089, different races have different sets of facial features which are used for facial recognition (because they vary more). Now, when programming the NN, what if you only told it to look for the set of facial features you thought was important? It's very easy to let unconscious biases seep into your code.
    - 10y ago

by HSO 10y ago

aangjie 10y ago

Err... I'm not so sure about this. I understand that as you grow up in one community, your brain networks/neurons specialize for distinguishing differences in facial features in that community more than in others. While I haven't seen enough chinese to argue, they have lesser facial feature variations, I can imagine how the algorithm defines facial features would be biased more towards the caucasian/European faces. So from the POV of the "facial feature detection" algorithm, European faces will have more variation in facial features than Chinese faces. Context: I grew up in southern india and spent most of my early years there, but travelled out to the northern India in the mid twenties. I can now say, I can see facial feature variations in the NE India folks(these folks have facial similarity with chinese) I see around now (I currently live in the south)

GTP 10y ago
>To someone who grew up in an Asian monoculture, without exposure to media with European faces, all Europeans would look alike too. I'm instead sure about this because of a funny incident that happened to my mother just a few years ago. She was standing near a pizzeria when a chinese waitress stepped out and said (translating from italian, sorry if I make some mistakes): waitress: "Take away?" my mother: "What?" waitress: "Take away?" my mother:"No, I haven't ordered anything" waitress: "You Italians! You look all alike!" EDIT: formatting

randyrand 10y ago

I imagine it's both.

Nydhal 10y ago
It's funny how racial bias always comes out in discussion about NN. It all depends on the training data and that's all there is to it. Yet somehow, some people tend to blame the models or the programmers for not correcting this "bias" that is not "supposed" to be there.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- wonnage 10y ago
  If the output of your fancy new NN classifies black people as gorillas it's absolutely the programmers' fault. It is useless for a large swathe of humanity, it creates a PR nightmare, etc. So nah, it's not funny.
  - jclos 10y ago
    It depends on how you define "programmers' fault". In this case it would more a case of needing more training data to correct the mistake, which may or may not be the programmer's fault.
- Manishearth 10y ago
  Of course it can be the programmer's fault. Programming NNs is not just about picking an unbiased sample set of data, you need to help the NN know what it's looking for. As I've explained in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12759089 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12759089, different races have different sets of facial features which are used for facial recognition (because they vary more). Now, when programming the NN, what if you only told it to look for the set of facial features you thought was important? It's very easy to let unconscious biases seep into your code.
  - 10y ago