4 ms·

Today I was unable to take a picture in a photo kiosk

30 points by louis-paul 7y ago

gregoriol 7y ago
People tend to think of this as horrible discriminating decisions made by some horrible people, but most likely it is a very cheap machine developed by an intern who had 3 days to make something work...
- sidpatil 7y ago
  Sounds like Hanlon's razor.
- gshdg 7y ago
  If that's the case, then the decision to assign it to an intern and give them 3 days, and then not to test it with a diverse set of subjects was somebody's fault and failure. If they were not an intern (or even if they were, frankly), the engineer who built it also had a responsibility to think beyond their own demographic; and if the timeline was too short to develop a properly robust system, to at least point that out to management.
  - gregoriol 7y ago
    As a side point, it could also be like: would someone pay 100$ for a picture in such a machine? This is sad, but that's how you get fastfoods too
    - StanislavPetrov 7y ago
      The better question is, why replace a simple photo booth that has worked flawlessly for decades for a few quarters with a machine that requires a massive investment to work properly and do the same thing? It reminds me very much of "smart toasters" and other gadgets that are extremely expensive and arguably don't work nearly as well and aren't nearly as reliable as the old appliances they are supposed to replace.
    - micheljansen 7y ago
      This is why we need regulation and can’t leave this kind of stuff up to the market. If it costs too much to make a machine that is trained on not just a set of white faces so it is not discriminatory, that machine should not be allowed to exist. The only alternative is that if you happen to be part of the privileged majority, you can get a cheap picture from an automated booth, whereas everyone else will have no choice but to pay for a more expensive alternative. This will work to amplify any differences that are already ingrained in society (that probably led to the homogenous training set to begin with).
    - bingtop 7y ago
      Passport photos have been issued for over a century without needing this crap. Yes, it meant more rejections, and it meant inspectors allowing photos that had minor rule violations, but convenience isn’t the paramount goal of everything.
- bingtop 7y ago
  That’s much worse. The number of people out there who will do this deliberately is much smaller than the number of people who will do it accidentally, but the harms are the same. We need to avoid carelessly applying technology to areas where carelessness can harm people severely.
- rolltiide 7y ago
  It doesn’t matter how it’s rationalized, it wouldn’t have shipped with a more observant set of people. Nobody consciously thinks infrared faucets and hand dryers discriminate, it doesn’t matter about how “hard” contrast on darker people must be for a machine, its just that the edge case when their sensors start failing should have not been considered an edge case at all and never shipped. Nobody should be in a position of playing devils advocate to dismiss minority experiences with technology explaining why companies are tone deaf, it just shouldn't have shipped.
- Waterluvian 7y ago
  Trivially fixable even in that fairly inexcusable case: add an override button. "by overriding you accept that this photo may ultimately be rejected for passport use."
  - Crosseye_Jack 7y ago
    There is an option to override, it’s just not visible in the picture. The booth is asking the user to “touch an option” but only 1 option is visible, the option to retake the photo has a “attempts remaining” counter and that the company logo is in the middle of the photo preview (the photo preview is in the middle of two options, which will make the company logo centred on the screen).
- djaque 7y ago
  No they don't. This is without a doubt a product of badly designed software. That badly designed software is making life difficult for people based on assumptions about race and gender. It's a problem which is worth fixing and deserves attention.
aaron695 7y ago
Unlike the title this is for a passport photo. You can't smile in a passport photo. If you compare her lips to recommended passport photos she is more smiling. If you look at the 2nd happy looking woman here, you can see her lips are not actually in a smile as much as the twitter pic - https://www.immigration.govt.nz/new-zealand-visas/apply-for-a-visa/tools-and-information/acceptable-photos https://www.immigration.govt.nz/new-zealand-visas/apply-for-... Twitter pic has a dour expression but AI isn't fooled, it looks at lips. Humans might be fooled and let the photo through though. Would need more evidence. The open mouth, not sure, stop smiling it might disappear, it could be a follow on assumption.
- adambatkin 7y ago
  Or their face looks different from faces that you are used to seeing (since all people are different) and the person is in fact not smiling.
- thundergolfer 7y ago
  We don’t need more evidence. The person in the picture is not smiling and their mouth is not open. The picture meets every criteria listed on the website you linked. It’s totally fine.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    >We don’t need more evidence. The person in the picture is not smiling and their mouth is not open. Well, she looks 100% like she is smiling to me. Her mouth is indeed not open, though, so I'll give you that. Even if that's her facial structure, and she was consciously not smiling, she does appear to be smiling.
kmlx 7y ago
i guess it's trendy to assume the worst, but my optimistic take is that "the machine is broken, use a different machine". maybe because encountering broken machines in public use is pretty much a daily experience for me. the company that produces the software or the box will either notice the issue and fix it. or not and be punished by the market.
3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago
Probably easier to send the photo off to mechanical Turk if it’s not a perfect match.
deogeo 7y ago
Why does a photo kiosk enforce passport photo requirements?
- tssva 7y ago
  Because it is a photo kiosk for taking passport photos.
  - deogeo 7y ago
    That doesn't clarify much. Is this some kind of official, government-sanctioned kiosk, whose approval of a photo carries some sort of final authority, and it doesn't just pass the photo on to the passport office? Because otherwise, it would work just fine without this enforcement functionality.
    - austhrow743 7y ago
      Submitting a bad photo with your passport application can really suck. It delays things a lot and potentially even costs you a submission fee. The point of passport photo services is to mimic (or try to) the official government photo reviewers criteria. That's the value it provides. Learning that you will be rejected quickly rather than slowly.
      - deogeo 7y ago
        Merely informing you of a bad photo would provide the same value. No need for enforcement.
salmo 7y ago
I saw a great talk at a conference about this by a woman from the University of Florida. I am sorry I don't remember her name or the conference. But this is a classic symptom of lack of diversity of developers (or test subjects). It's like the sinks that don't activate with dark hands (one of her examples). It's another reason we need to focus on developing underrepresented talent.
coldtea 7y ago
Well, she does look smiling to me in the picture she posted...

30 points by louis-paul 7y ago

People tend to think of this as horrible discriminating decisions made by some horrible people, but most likely it is a very cheap machine developed by an intern who had 3 days to make something work...

sidpatil 7y ago
Sounds like Hanlon's razor.
gshdg 7y ago
If that's the case, then the decision to assign it to an intern and give them 3 days, and then not to test it with a diverse set of subjects was somebody's fault and failure. If they were not an intern (or even if they were, frankly), the engineer who built it also had a responsibility to think beyond their own demographic; and if the timeline was too short to develop a properly robust system, to at least point that out to management.
- gregoriol 7y ago
  As a side point, it could also be like: would someone pay 100$ for a picture in such a machine? This is sad, but that's how you get fastfoods too
  - StanislavPetrov 7y ago
    The better question is, why replace a simple photo booth that has worked flawlessly for decades for a few quarters with a machine that requires a massive investment to work properly and do the same thing? It reminds me very much of "smart toasters" and other gadgets that are extremely expensive and arguably don't work nearly as well and aren't nearly as reliable as the old appliances they are supposed to replace.
  - micheljansen 7y ago
    This is why we need regulation and can’t leave this kind of stuff up to the market. If it costs too much to make a machine that is trained on not just a set of white faces so it is not discriminatory, that machine should not be allowed to exist. The only alternative is that if you happen to be part of the privileged majority, you can get a cheap picture from an automated booth, whereas everyone else will have no choice but to pay for a more expensive alternative. This will work to amplify any differences that are already ingrained in society (that probably led to the homogenous training set to begin with).
  - bingtop 7y ago
    Passport photos have been issued for over a century without needing this crap. Yes, it meant more rejections, and it meant inspectors allowing photos that had minor rule violations, but convenience isn’t the paramount goal of everything.
bingtop 7y ago
That’s much worse. The number of people out there who will do this deliberately is much smaller than the number of people who will do it accidentally, but the harms are the same. We need to avoid carelessly applying technology to areas where carelessness can harm people severely.
rolltiide 7y ago
It doesn’t matter how it’s rationalized, it wouldn’t have shipped with a more observant set of people. Nobody consciously thinks infrared faucets and hand dryers discriminate, it doesn’t matter about how “hard” contrast on darker people must be for a machine, its just that the edge case when their sensors start failing should have not been considered an edge case at all and never shipped. Nobody should be in a position of playing devils advocate to dismiss minority experiences with technology explaining why companies are tone deaf, it just shouldn't have shipped.
Waterluvian 7y ago
Trivially fixable even in that fairly inexcusable case: add an override button. "by overriding you accept that this photo may ultimately be rejected for passport use."
- Crosseye_Jack 7y ago
  There is an option to override, it’s just not visible in the picture. The booth is asking the user to “touch an option” but only 1 option is visible, the option to retake the photo has a “attempts remaining” counter and that the company logo is in the middle of the photo preview (the photo preview is in the middle of two options, which will make the company logo centred on the screen).
djaque 7y ago
No they don't. This is without a doubt a product of badly designed software. That badly designed software is making life difficult for people based on assumptions about race and gender. It's a problem which is worth fixing and deserves attention.

aaron695 7y ago

Unlike the title this is for a passport photo. You can't smile in a passport photo. If you compare her lips to recommended passport photos she is more smiling. If you look at the 2nd happy looking woman here, you can see her lips are not actually in a smile as much as the twitter pic - https://www.immigration.govt.nz/new-zealand-visas/apply-for-a-visa/tools-and-information/acceptable-photos https://www.immigration.govt.nz/new-zealand-visas/apply-for-... Twitter pic has a dour expression but AI isn't fooled, it looks at lips. Humans might be fooled and let the photo through though. Would need more evidence. The open mouth, not sure, stop smiling it might disappear, it could be a follow on assumption.

adambatkin 7y ago
Or their face looks different from faces that you are used to seeing (since all people are different) and the person is in fact not smiling.
thundergolfer 7y ago
We don’t need more evidence. The person in the picture is not smiling and their mouth is not open. The picture meets every criteria listed on the website you linked. It’s totally fine.
- coldtea 7y ago
  >We don’t need more evidence. The person in the picture is not smiling and their mouth is not open. Well, she looks 100% like she is smiling to me. Her mouth is indeed not open, though, so I'll give you that. Even if that's her facial structure, and she was consciously not smiling, she does appear to be smiling.

kmlx 7y ago

i guess it's trendy to assume the worst, but my optimistic take is that "the machine is broken, use a different machine". maybe because encountering broken machines in public use is pretty much a daily experience for me. the company that produces the software or the box will either notice the issue and fix it. or not and be punished by the market.

3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago

Probably easier to send the photo off to mechanical Turk if it’s not a perfect match.

deogeo 7y ago

Why does a photo kiosk enforce passport photo requirements?

tssva 7y ago
Because it is a photo kiosk for taking passport photos.
- deogeo 7y ago
  That doesn't clarify much. Is this some kind of official, government-sanctioned kiosk, whose approval of a photo carries some sort of final authority, and it doesn't just pass the photo on to the passport office? Because otherwise, it would work just fine without this enforcement functionality.
  - austhrow743 7y ago
    Submitting a bad photo with your passport application can really suck. It delays things a lot and potentially even costs you a submission fee. The point of passport photo services is to mimic (or try to) the official government photo reviewers criteria. That's the value it provides. Learning that you will be rejected quickly rather than slowly.
    - deogeo 7y ago
      Merely informing you of a bad photo would provide the same value. No need for enforcement.

salmo 7y ago

I saw a great talk at a conference about this by a woman from the University of Florida. I am sorry I don't remember her name or the conference. But this is a classic symptom of lack of diversity of developers (or test subjects). It's like the sinks that don't activate with dark hands (one of her examples). It's another reason we need to focus on developing underrepresented talent.

coldtea 7y ago

Well, she does look smiling to me in the picture she posted...