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I posted this, and definitely wasn't thinking of it as clickbait, or even as controversial. As Dan says, I think this history is both intellectually interesting

I posted this, and definitely wasn't thinking of it as clickbait, or even as controversial. As Dan says, I think this history is both intellectually interesting and relevant to my work as an engineer, today. Over time, as the technology of photography was invented and iteratively improved, film formulations came to work better for taking photographs of light-skinned people than of dark-skinned people. Inventors and engineers didn't set out to disadvantage dark-skinned people specifically. But it happened anyway. In the relatively short history of commercial "AI", we've already seen examples of machine learning systems that followed a similar development path. Non-representative data sets[0], replicating existing bias[1], over-fitting data sets to the point where the outcomes violate non-discrimination laws[2], etc. One way to help avoid making these mistakes is to think about how they were made in the past, in other engineering contexts. [0]-https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/04/the-underlying-bias-of-facial-recognition-systems/476991/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/04/the-u... [1]-https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/10/17958784/ai-recruiting-tool-bias-amazon-report https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/10/17958784/ai-recruiting-t... [2]-https://www.vox.com/2019/3/21/18275746/facebook-settles-ad-discrimination-lawsuits https://www.vox.com/2019/3/21/18275746/facebook-settles-ad-d...

danieltillett 7y ago
It is not just photography, even in real life under low light conditions it can be hard to read the facial expressions of dark skinned people.
- mirimir 7y ago
  True. So maybe skin darkening would be more practical than CV Dazzle, because it wouldn't be so unusual. Horrible legacy and PR, though. Anyway, I suspect that was an evolutionary advantage. For hunting in forest and savannah, to hide in shadows. The human rootstock was black, I gather. And lighter skin evolved where soft UV was limiting for vitamin D synthesis. But that's solvable with the right technology. Maybe something like getting overall color value, and then tweaking color contrast. If we can do it in astronomy, we can do it with people.
  - an_ko 7y ago
    I would guess that the evolutionary advantage of black skin was not primarily camouflage. Tool-using humans of any colour can do that with mud and grass. My bet is on UV tolerance. Black people have lower rates of skin cancer in the US compared to whites. https://www.jaad.org/article/S0190-9622(05)02730-1/fulltext https://www.jaad.org/article/S0190-9622(05)02730-1/fulltext (Mortality is higher in blacks, but that's because it's diagnosed at later more severe stages.) The effect would have been far bigger when foraging and hunting all day every day under the equatorial sun.
    - todd8 7y ago
      Or perhaps light skin was an evolutionary development as humans moved to higher latitudes in order to obtain high enough levels of vitamin D. See [1]: The evolutionary significance of vitamin D, skin pigment, and ultraviolet light. 1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/1211435/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/1211435/
    - mirimir 7y ago
      Good points. And maybe there's linked stuff that got selected for.
  - danieltillett 7y ago
    The genetic history of human skin colour is really amazing. All our ancestor had fair skin because of body hair (Chimps have fairish skin under all their body hair), we then became dark skinned as we lost most of our body hair, and then those of us who had ancestors that lived far from the equator became fair again. As someone who has the ancestry of people who lived far from the equator and now lives in a country that is much closer to the equator I wish we hadn't lost our body hair.
    - mirimir 7y ago
      Huh. I guess that I've never seen a shaved chimp. But now that I think of it, hairless mice have light-colored skin. Some hairless dogs too.
jfindley 7y ago
In the days of film photography this was an important issue - negative/slide film chemistry had a huge impact on the output of your work. I used to shoot a lot of Fuji Velvia due to its excellent contrast and reasonable resolving power. It was terrible for portraits, though, of any race - it picked up too much red in both light and dark skin tones, and the result rarely looked good. However I definitely think that it was true back then that more portrait orientated film chemistry was poorly optimised for those of African descent or with similar skin tones. I'm less certain it's such an issue today. Some cameras have face recognition built in as a focus/af assist, and I suspect that these are better with some faces than others (most consumer cameras are developed in asia so I'd except them to do best with asian faces, but as I don't use this sort of feature I don't know). Other than that, I'm struggling to come up with a way that bias - in the way I'd define it - could creep in. In-body JPEG colour profile perhaps, but most serious photographers don't depend on that, and it can be rectified in post anyway. On the other hand, there's the unfortunate technical problem that dynamic range is limited, and having a subject with very large contrast between skin and clothing brightness is technically challenging to shoot, especially in a situation like the one illustrated where the subject can move around so you have limited fine grained control over lighting. I'm totally on board with presenting the former film chemistry issue as bias - but that's pretty much just historical at this point. The number of people shooting events on slide film is pretty close to zero these days. There's also very little if any investment into film chemistry as a consequence of this. The second issue irks me a bit. If you have very dark skin and wear very light clothing, or very light skin and wear very dark clothing then it's going to be more of a challenge to capture you effectively. That's physics not racism, and conflating the two issues feels a bit disingenuous to me.

danieltillett 7y ago

It is not just photography, even in real life under low light conditions it can be hard to read the facial expressions of dark skinned people.

mirimir 7y ago
True. So maybe skin darkening would be more practical than CV Dazzle, because it wouldn't be so unusual. Horrible legacy and PR, though. Anyway, I suspect that was an evolutionary advantage. For hunting in forest and savannah, to hide in shadows. The human rootstock was black, I gather. And lighter skin evolved where soft UV was limiting for vitamin D synthesis. But that's solvable with the right technology. Maybe something like getting overall color value, and then tweaking color contrast. If we can do it in astronomy, we can do it with people.
- an_ko 7y ago
  I would guess that the evolutionary advantage of black skin was not primarily camouflage. Tool-using humans of any colour can do that with mud and grass. My bet is on UV tolerance. Black people have lower rates of skin cancer in the US compared to whites. https://www.jaad.org/article/S0190-9622(05)02730-1/fulltext https://www.jaad.org/article/S0190-9622(05)02730-1/fulltext (Mortality is higher in blacks, but that's because it's diagnosed at later more severe stages.) The effect would have been far bigger when foraging and hunting all day every day under the equatorial sun.
  - todd8 7y ago
    Or perhaps light skin was an evolutionary development as humans moved to higher latitudes in order to obtain high enough levels of vitamin D. See [1]: The evolutionary significance of vitamin D, skin pigment, and ultraviolet light. 1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/1211435/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/1211435/
  - mirimir 7y ago
    Good points. And maybe there's linked stuff that got selected for.
- danieltillett 7y ago
  The genetic history of human skin colour is really amazing. All our ancestor had fair skin because of body hair (Chimps have fairish skin under all their body hair), we then became dark skinned as we lost most of our body hair, and then those of us who had ancestors that lived far from the equator became fair again. As someone who has the ancestry of people who lived far from the equator and now lives in a country that is much closer to the equator I wish we hadn't lost our body hair.
  - mirimir 7y ago
    Huh. I guess that I've never seen a shaved chimp. But now that I think of it, hairless mice have light-colored skin. Some hairless dogs too.

jfindley 7y ago

In the days of film photography this was an important issue - negative/slide film chemistry had a huge impact on the output of your work. I used to shoot a lot of Fuji Velvia due to its excellent contrast and reasonable resolving power. It was terrible for portraits, though, of any race - it picked up too much red in both light and dark skin tones, and the result rarely looked good. However I definitely think that it was true back then that more portrait orientated film chemistry was poorly optimised for those of African descent or with similar skin tones. I'm less certain it's such an issue today. Some cameras have face recognition built in as a focus/af assist, and I suspect that these are better with some faces than others (most consumer cameras are developed in asia so I'd except them to do best with asian faces, but as I don't use this sort of feature I don't know). Other than that, I'm struggling to come up with a way that bias - in the way I'd define it - could creep in. In-body JPEG colour profile perhaps, but most serious photographers don't depend on that, and it can be rectified in post anyway. On the other hand, there's the unfortunate technical problem that dynamic range is limited, and having a subject with very large contrast between skin and clothing brightness is technically challenging to shoot, especially in a situation like the one illustrated where the subject can move around so you have limited fine grained control over lighting. I'm totally on board with presenting the former film chemistry issue as bias - but that's pretty much just historical at this point. The number of people shooting events on slide film is pretty close to zero these days. There's also very little if any investment into film chemistry as a consequence of this. The second issue irks me a bit. If you have very dark skin and wear very light clothing, or very light skin and wear very dark clothing then it's going to be more of a challenge to capture you effectively. That's physics not racism, and conflating the two issues feels a bit disingenuous to me.