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> “It’s become clear to me that algorithmic proctoring is a modern surveillance technology that reinforces white supremacy, sexism, ableism, and transphobia. Th

> “It’s become clear to me that algorithmic proctoring is a modern surveillance technology that reinforces white supremacy, sexism, ableism, and transphobia. The use of these tools is an invasion of students’ privacy and, often, a civil rights violation." Must all of the cards in the deck be played at each turn? Things cannot simply be bad/user hostile/privacy invading, etc.

NikolaeVarius 5y ago
Yes. Since its A) incredibly easy to play all the cards and b) its pretty much impossible to attempt to refute without being labeled all of the above and c) gives the accuser woke points Its win win win for the accuser
- devilduck 5y ago
  Of course! Calling this out makes you a free-spirit and free-thinker. Definitely not brainwashed at all to be oppositional to that list of things that are obviously terrible.
- r00fus 5y ago
  b) is untrue. It's pretty clear when fake accusations are BS and you don't have to be "labeled" to call them out. It does require you to engage with people directly.
  - NikolaeVarius 5y ago
    Im calling out this accusation as fake and unsubstantiated.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - r00fus 5y ago
      You're not being accused of anything, so whatever's fake is in your head.
      - NikolaeVarius 5y ago
        Clearly you are attempting to deliberately misread my comment since your comment literally makes no sense in context. "This" clearly means the original accusation in the OP.
- toqy 5y ago
  You're anonymous online. You have the ability to create a throwaway and refute the actual arguments in the article all you want with literally 0 repercussion. Honestly seems more like you're chasing your own version of woke points.
  - NikolaeVarius 5y ago
    Ok Fine. > It’s not clear to me that algorithmic proctoring is a modern surveillance technology that reinforces white supremacy, sexism, ableism, and transphobia. The use of these tools is an invasion of students’ privacy and, often, a civil rights violation."
  - hhhhhbh 5y ago
    He's not anonymous, he's posting with his real name and has a KeyBase identity in his profile. Honestly it takes serious guts to call out Woke BS with proof of identity in your profile.
gunshai 5y ago
Haha, you gotta know when to holdem
acdha 5y ago
Don't you normally expect people to make the strongest case for preventing something? It's pretty common for a lawsuit to bring every claim a lawyer can come up with on the hopes that enough will stick to get the outcome they want. I would especially consider that in the United States we do not have a broad legal right to privacy but there are potentially much stronger tools available if that software skews negative outcomes towards protected categories like sex, disability, or race. From the perspective of a student, job applicant, etc. being asked to use this, if the legal risks cause an organization to stop using it they'll enjoy that as a win even if the outcome isn't a blanket ban.
- Enginerrrd 5y ago
  >Don't you normally expect people to make the strongest case for preventing something? Not at the expense of grounded reasoning. When I see poorly substantiated claims, it shouldn't, but it really drags the whole rest of the argument down. The argument presented about lawsuits is actually a great example of why I think that's a broken system. They resolve that issue of lost credibility by considering each issue with total, clear, and mandated separation. Outside of that legal world with very well-defined rules, using such tactics reduces credibility. I should note, that in this particular case, the claim of racial biases is at least substantiated by a believable anecdote. EDIT: To clarify why I think the legal methodology is broken, its only because the same principles apply to criminal trials. IMO, prosecutors should NOT be throwing poorly substantiated charges at a defendant just to increase their winning probability and make the required defense more expensive.
  - BobbyJo 5y ago
    > When I see poorly substantiated claims, it shouldn't, but it really drags the whole rest of the argument down. It should. If someone is willing to make wild, unsubstantiated, claims, it should detract from their credibility.
    - acdha 5y ago
      You're talking about a letter from a U.S. Senator citing published reports in e.g. MIT Technology Review and concerns raised by professional organizations. I think dismissing that as “wild, unsubstantiated” would require at least some discussion of the linked claims.
aeturnum 5y ago
Things are bad in particular ways - software that is more likely to falsely punish people of color does support the continued dominance of white people in a real, material way. Noting how things are bad seems useful and important to me. That being said, there's a rotating list of "badnesses" that are in the zeitgeist and I agree that it's annoying to see them flogged at every opportunity (often w/o much insight).
- mercurialmaven 5y ago
  "software that is more likely to falsely punish people of color does support the continued dominance of white people in a real, material way." The statement is at best extremely misleading, and at worse, mostly false. It also represents a juvenile, immature, and myopic perspective on reality. I would suggest reading "Wealth, Poverty, and Politics" or "Discrimination and Disparities" by Thomas Sowell. He has been debunking the "inequality of outcome therefore racism" logical fallacy for decades.
  - monocasa 5y ago
    Software that's way more likely to fail you literally because of darker skin sounds way more like "inequality of opportunity" to me.
    - mechanical_bear 5y ago
      It’s more likely to fail because…physics. The sensor on your webcam is only so big, and can only capture so much light. Darker faces require more lighting to capture details. Photography isn’t racist, it’s physical limitations that come into play.
      - monocasa 5y ago
        A) The major issue is not the sensors, it's the lack of emphasis of ML training data for darker skin. B) Even if it were simply physics at play, requiring the use of a system known to have physical constraints against darker skin causing failing grades purely on that metric is still pretty racist.
comrh 5y ago
The quoted person expands on their arguments on those topics in the linked article. If you think they're needlessly "playing a card" why not engage with the actual argument?
named-user 5y ago
Yes because to do otherwise would be exclusionist.
vadfa 5y ago
https://library.auraria.edu/sites/default/files/images/fancy-articles/shea-swauger-headshot-article.jpg https://library.auraria.edu/sites/default/files/images/fancy...
devilduck 5y ago
Must it always be a game where cards are to be played? Things can indeed simply be bad, such as your ideas about the text you are quoting.
backoncemore 5y ago
> proctoring is a modern surveillance technology that reinforces white supremacy, sexism, ableism, and transphobia. All you can do is laugh at this point.
compscistd 5y ago
It’s hard to make people care with “bad/user hostile/privacy invading” because those terms have saturated descriptions of behavior that users are okay with. Example: tons of articles mention FB as a privacy invading or user hostile service but it continues to be used by people who don’t really care. Using the same terminology for something that is arguably worse with much higher stakes (algorithmic proctoring that “reinforces white supremacy, sexism, ableism, and transphobia”) is appropriate because it gets the reader to care by illustrating exactly what is possible with algo proctoring. I sense you’re tired of discussions that mention the “cards in the deck”, likely because you aren’t affected by them and therefore care little for them. That’s honestly fair, but there’s value in writing that way to channel outrage into action.
- NikolaeVarius 5y ago
  So you're completely okay with saying anything that has dubious truth value as long as it supports whatever cause you happen to promote. Great. Good to know where the zeitgeist is.
  - kilnr 5y ago
    But extrapolating from one HN commenter onto the entire zeitgeist is acceptable to you?
    - NikolaeVarius 5y ago
      Direct question. Do you agree with the aforementioned commenter and why or why not.
monocasa 5y ago
When they break even worse when you have black skin, it certainly sounds like a civil rights violation.
- LudwigNagasena 5y ago
  It really doesn’t.
tshaddox 5y ago
Is your criticism that these accusations are false, or just that they included too many true accusations in the same paragraph?
- anon7725 5y ago
  My criticism is that including a laundry list of "isms" is a polarizing, low-effort rhetorical device that elides a lot of nuance. White supremacy: darker skin tones tend to photograph worse than lighter skin tones. Laptop webcams are notoriously crappy and can make this effect worse. Is this white supremacy or physics? Can the test instructions be modified to ask all users to have an appropriate lighting setup (ie lit from above and from the side to ensure that your face is foregrounded properly) Ableism: for users who require assistive technologies, is it better to take a test in their own space with their own equipment or to travel to a test center and use shared lab equipment? For users with mobility challenges, is it better to be in their own space or travel to a potentially non-accessible testing center? Sexism: for working mothers, better to take a test in your own home or travel to a testing center and arrange for child care? Two "isms" seem more relevant but weren’t mentioned: ageism - because fuck boomers, right? Socioeconomics - not everyone has access to a PC that meets the specifications or can acquire one on short notice. Lots of context is discarded when one engages in polarizing categorical rhetoric. I’m not here shilling for proctoring software but rather for nuanced discourse.
  - 8note 5y ago
    Would these webcams have shipped if you couldn't see white faces well on them? I don't think they would, and the test proctors would not think of requiring one that didn't. Both the camera makers and the proctors are putting in an assumption that these products are only/primarily for white people, and thus discouraging non-white people is not an issue.
  - tshaddox 5y ago
    > White supremacy: darker skin tones tend to photograph worse than lighter skin tones. Laptop webcams are notoriously crappy and can make this effect worse. Is this white supremacy or physics? I’m not a photography expert, but it seems to me that cameras are physically equally capable of overexposing an image and underexposing an image. If a particular camera which is used in a facial monitoring system tends to do one rather than the other, I would ask why that is the case.
agentdrtran 5y ago
Which one of these is inaccurate?
- throwaway135790 5y ago
  The claim of "transphobia" is extremely weak, for one. Clicking through the maze of links, the argument appears to be that because algorithms that attempt to guess gender based on photos sometimes guess wrong when trans people are involved, all attempts by computers to look at faces must therefore be transphobic, even if those computers do not attempt to guess the gender of the person whose face they're looking at.
  - agentdrtran 5y ago
    Misgendering people intentionally is transphobic, and systems of this nature behave this way. For many trans people getting an ID to correctly reflect their name and gender is extremely difficult and can go for months/years without it being corrected; companies like Proctor U don't care about the problems this causes: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/exam-surveillance-tools-remote-learning https://www.teenvogue.com/story/exam-surveillance-tools-remo...
captn3m0 5y ago
I followed the references to find the actual argument behind calling surveillance proctoring all of the above, and these are the relevant bits[0]: >At the beginning of a test, these products ask students to verify their identity by matching their appearance with a photo ID. As Os Keyes has demonstrated, facial recognition has a terrible history with gender[x]. This means that a software asking students to verify their identity is compromising for students who identify as trans, non-binary, or express their gender in ways counter to cis/heteronormativity. If a student’s gender expression or name on their ID are different from their current gender expression or name, the algorithm may flag them as suspicious. When this happens, they may have to undergo another level of scrutiny to authenticate their identity, an already common and traumatic experience for trans and gender non-conforming students. If these students are not alerted of this possibility before the test begins, it may force them to either discontinue the test and risk their grade, or out themselves to their course owner when they may not want to, risking more trauma and discrimination including being denied financial aid, being forced to leave their institution, or have their lives put in physical danger. >The Eugenic Gaze is a combination of white supremacy, sexism, ableism, cis/heteronormativity, and xenophobia. When we apply the Eugenic Gaze using technology, the way we do with algorithmic test proctoring, we’re able to codify and reinforce all of those oppressive systems while avoiding equity-based critiques because of our belief in the neutrality of data and technology. Their recommendations are quite reasonable: >Don’t use algorithmic test proctoring. Instead, focus on pedagogical techniques that you can use to design assessments, online or in person, that draw from personal experience or require students to apply concepts in unique contexts. If you have to use algorithmic test proctoring, make sure students know about the test settings and ID requirement well before they take a test, and assure them that you will not take any behavior flagged as “suspicious” into consideration that isn’t described explicitly in the syllabus. The GP link[1] instead calls out "Facial Recognition Tech", and "Algorithmic Proctoring" as being too biased and follows up with a petition[2] to ban these entirely. [0]: https://hybridpedagogy.org/our-bodies-encoded-algorithmic-test-proctoring-in-higher-education/ https://hybridpedagogy.org/our-bodies-encoded-algorithmic-te... [1]: https://library.auraria.edu/news/2021/why-online-test-proctoring-biased-expert https://library.auraria.edu/news/2021/why-online-test-procto... [2]: https://www.sheaswauger.com/post/petition-to-ban-facial-recognition-and-algorithmic-proctoring https://www.sheaswauger.com/post/petition-to-ban-facial-reco... [x]: https://ironholds.org/resources/papers/agr_paper.pdf https://ironholds.org/resources/papers/agr_paper.pdf "The Misgendering Machines: Trans/HCI Implications of Automatic Gender Recognition"
camgunz 5y ago
It's not news that facial recognition is best at white male-presenting faces and bad at all the others. ProctorU is also pretty hard to use for the differently abled. I think you just reflexively dismissed this because you saw a basket of words that normally go along with things you disagree with, but the argument is pretty solid.
- handrous 5y ago
  > It's not news that facial recognition is best at white male-presenting faces Really? On the male part? I'd have expected it to do best with women, because I'd have figured facial hair is more difficult to deal with than a wider varieties of hair styles.
pdpi 5y ago
It's important to note that none of these things are necessarily done deliberately (though "white supremacy" is perhaps a bad way to express "racism that benefits white people specifically"). Other than transphobia, either the linked article, or the letter linked in that article provide evidence for all of the accusations. Facial recognition software that doesn't handle dark skin well intrinsically treats different ethnicities differently, in this case disadvantaging non-white people. Many of the markers for "suspicious behaviour" that are used to detect cheating are also present in people with both mental and physical health conditions. Dealing poorly with headware has an outsized influence for non-white women (who are likeliest to wear headwear that obstructs the face). Again, I wouldn't chalk any of this up to deliberate bias against any of these groups, but it's all bias anonetheless.
- ygjb 5y ago
  > (though "white supremacy" is perhaps a bad way to express "racism that benefits white people specifically") Can you explain how racism that benefits white people specifically, as enabled through either direct, explicit bias in policies or laws, or indirect, implicit bias through a lack of diversity when conducting research on human computer interactions, or training corpus used for machine learning is not explicitly white supremacy? These types of issues have been mainstream and well documented that they are at the centre of a 2009 episode of a sitcom (Better Off Ted, Racial Sensitivity), among many other more conventional studies of the phenomenon. After decades of research (and centuries of practical observation) how is it even possible to handwave away systemic racism and bias "that benefits white people specifically" as anything other that white supremacy? Edit: I accidentally left out the italicized part of the first question.
  - fabianhjr 5y ago
    [deleted]
    - ygjb 5y ago
      Yes, I totally get that, unfortunately I accidentally left out part of the first question in an edit :(
ygjb 5y ago
I mean, it's an article about how a technology is negatively impacting marginalized groups, and cites research that backs those claims. It makes sense to cite the groups and practices most impacted by it. You could read the research and refute it, or you could just bluster about things. I know you tried to expand on it in your comment below, but minimizing the specific concerns raised to "isms" and ignoring that at least two of the references in the articles linked and their references for the actual research addressed at least the socioeconomic portion of it, illustrates that you only applied your surface level perspective and criticism.
908B64B197 5y ago
> Things cannot simply be bad/user hostile/privacy invading, etc. In this case, the algorithm is actually bad for all ethnicities [0]. It's just that it's extremely bad for black students (fails half the time) and just regular bad for everyone else (fails a quarter of the time). [0] https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/8/22374386/proctorio-racial-bias-issues-opencv-facial-detection-schools-tests-remote-learning https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/8/22374386/proctorio-racial-...

NikolaeVarius 5y ago

Yes. Since its A) incredibly easy to play all the cards and b) its pretty much impossible to attempt to refute without being labeled all of the above and c) gives the accuser woke points Its win win win for the accuser

devilduck 5y ago
Of course! Calling this out makes you a free-spirit and free-thinker. Definitely not brainwashed at all to be oppositional to that list of things that are obviously terrible.
r00fus 5y ago
b) is untrue. It's pretty clear when fake accusations are BS and you don't have to be "labeled" to call them out. It does require you to engage with people directly.
- NikolaeVarius 5y ago
  Im calling out this accusation as fake and unsubstantiated.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - r00fus 5y ago
    You're not being accused of anything, so whatever's fake is in your head.
    - NikolaeVarius 5y ago
      Clearly you are attempting to deliberately misread my comment since your comment literally makes no sense in context. "This" clearly means the original accusation in the OP.
toqy 5y ago
You're anonymous online. You have the ability to create a throwaway and refute the actual arguments in the article all you want with literally 0 repercussion. Honestly seems more like you're chasing your own version of woke points.
- NikolaeVarius 5y ago
  Ok Fine. > It’s not clear to me that algorithmic proctoring is a modern surveillance technology that reinforces white supremacy, sexism, ableism, and transphobia. The use of these tools is an invasion of students’ privacy and, often, a civil rights violation."
- hhhhhbh 5y ago
  He's not anonymous, he's posting with his real name and has a KeyBase identity in his profile. Honestly it takes serious guts to call out Woke BS with proof of identity in your profile.

gunshai 5y ago

Haha, you gotta know when to holdem

acdha 5y ago

Don't you normally expect people to make the strongest case for preventing something? It's pretty common for a lawsuit to bring every claim a lawyer can come up with on the hopes that enough will stick to get the outcome they want. I would especially consider that in the United States we do not have a broad legal right to privacy but there are potentially much stronger tools available if that software skews negative outcomes towards protected categories like sex, disability, or race. From the perspective of a student, job applicant, etc. being asked to use this, if the legal risks cause an organization to stop using it they'll enjoy that as a win even if the outcome isn't a blanket ban.

Enginerrrd 5y ago
>Don't you normally expect people to make the strongest case for preventing something? Not at the expense of grounded reasoning. When I see poorly substantiated claims, it shouldn't, but it really drags the whole rest of the argument down. The argument presented about lawsuits is actually a great example of why I think that's a broken system. They resolve that issue of lost credibility by considering each issue with total, clear, and mandated separation. Outside of that legal world with very well-defined rules, using such tactics reduces credibility. I should note, that in this particular case, the claim of racial biases is at least substantiated by a believable anecdote. EDIT: To clarify why I think the legal methodology is broken, its only because the same principles apply to criminal trials. IMO, prosecutors should NOT be throwing poorly substantiated charges at a defendant just to increase their winning probability and make the required defense more expensive.
- BobbyJo 5y ago
  > When I see poorly substantiated claims, it shouldn't, but it really drags the whole rest of the argument down. It should. If someone is willing to make wild, unsubstantiated, claims, it should detract from their credibility.
  - acdha 5y ago
    You're talking about a letter from a U.S. Senator citing published reports in e.g. MIT Technology Review and concerns raised by professional organizations. I think dismissing that as “wild, unsubstantiated” would require at least some discussion of the linked claims.

aeturnum 5y ago

Things are bad in particular ways - software that is more likely to falsely punish people of color does support the continued dominance of white people in a real, material way. Noting how things are bad seems useful and important to me. That being said, there's a rotating list of "badnesses" that are in the zeitgeist and I agree that it's annoying to see them flogged at every opportunity (often w/o much insight).

mercurialmaven 5y ago
"software that is more likely to falsely punish people of color does support the continued dominance of white people in a real, material way." The statement is at best extremely misleading, and at worse, mostly false. It also represents a juvenile, immature, and myopic perspective on reality. I would suggest reading "Wealth, Poverty, and Politics" or "Discrimination and Disparities" by Thomas Sowell. He has been debunking the "inequality of outcome therefore racism" logical fallacy for decades.
- monocasa 5y ago
  Software that's way more likely to fail you literally because of darker skin sounds way more like "inequality of opportunity" to me.
  - mechanical_bear 5y ago
    It’s more likely to fail because…physics. The sensor on your webcam is only so big, and can only capture so much light. Darker faces require more lighting to capture details. Photography isn’t racist, it’s physical limitations that come into play.
    - monocasa 5y ago
      A) The major issue is not the sensors, it's the lack of emphasis of ML training data for darker skin. B) Even if it were simply physics at play, requiring the use of a system known to have physical constraints against darker skin causing failing grades purely on that metric is still pretty racist.

comrh 5y ago

The quoted person expands on their arguments on those topics in the linked article. If you think they're needlessly "playing a card" why not engage with the actual argument?

named-user 5y ago

Yes because to do otherwise would be exclusionist.

vadfa 5y ago

https://library.auraria.edu/sites/default/files/images/fancy-articles/shea-swauger-headshot-article.jpg https://library.auraria.edu/sites/default/files/images/fancy...

devilduck 5y ago

Must it always be a game where cards are to be played? Things can indeed simply be bad, such as your ideas about the text you are quoting.

backoncemore 5y ago

> proctoring is a modern surveillance technology that reinforces white supremacy, sexism, ableism, and transphobia. All you can do is laugh at this point.

compscistd 5y ago

It’s hard to make people care with “bad/user hostile/privacy invading” because those terms have saturated descriptions of behavior that users are okay with. Example: tons of articles mention FB as a privacy invading or user hostile service but it continues to be used by people who don’t really care. Using the same terminology for something that is arguably worse with much higher stakes (algorithmic proctoring that “reinforces white supremacy, sexism, ableism, and transphobia”) is appropriate because it gets the reader to care by illustrating exactly what is possible with algo proctoring. I sense you’re tired of discussions that mention the “cards in the deck”, likely because you aren’t affected by them and therefore care little for them. That’s honestly fair, but there’s value in writing that way to channel outrage into action.

NikolaeVarius 5y ago
So you're completely okay with saying anything that has dubious truth value as long as it supports whatever cause you happen to promote. Great. Good to know where the zeitgeist is.
- kilnr 5y ago
  But extrapolating from one HN commenter onto the entire zeitgeist is acceptable to you?
  - NikolaeVarius 5y ago
    Direct question. Do you agree with the aforementioned commenter and why or why not.

monocasa 5y ago

When they break even worse when you have black skin, it certainly sounds like a civil rights violation.

LudwigNagasena 5y ago
It really doesn’t.

tshaddox 5y ago

Is your criticism that these accusations are false, or just that they included too many true accusations in the same paragraph?

anon7725 5y ago
My criticism is that including a laundry list of "isms" is a polarizing, low-effort rhetorical device that elides a lot of nuance. White supremacy: darker skin tones tend to photograph worse than lighter skin tones. Laptop webcams are notoriously crappy and can make this effect worse. Is this white supremacy or physics? Can the test instructions be modified to ask all users to have an appropriate lighting setup (ie lit from above and from the side to ensure that your face is foregrounded properly) Ableism: for users who require assistive technologies, is it better to take a test in their own space with their own equipment or to travel to a test center and use shared lab equipment? For users with mobility challenges, is it better to be in their own space or travel to a potentially non-accessible testing center? Sexism: for working mothers, better to take a test in your own home or travel to a testing center and arrange for child care? Two "isms" seem more relevant but weren’t mentioned: ageism - because fuck boomers, right? Socioeconomics - not everyone has access to a PC that meets the specifications or can acquire one on short notice. Lots of context is discarded when one engages in polarizing categorical rhetoric. I’m not here shilling for proctoring software but rather for nuanced discourse.
- 8note 5y ago
  Would these webcams have shipped if you couldn't see white faces well on them? I don't think they would, and the test proctors would not think of requiring one that didn't. Both the camera makers and the proctors are putting in an assumption that these products are only/primarily for white people, and thus discouraging non-white people is not an issue.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  > White supremacy: darker skin tones tend to photograph worse than lighter skin tones. Laptop webcams are notoriously crappy and can make this effect worse. Is this white supremacy or physics? I’m not a photography expert, but it seems to me that cameras are physically equally capable of overexposing an image and underexposing an image. If a particular camera which is used in a facial monitoring system tends to do one rather than the other, I would ask why that is the case.

agentdrtran 5y ago

Which one of these is inaccurate?

throwaway135790 5y ago
The claim of "transphobia" is extremely weak, for one. Clicking through the maze of links, the argument appears to be that because algorithms that attempt to guess gender based on photos sometimes guess wrong when trans people are involved, all attempts by computers to look at faces must therefore be transphobic, even if those computers do not attempt to guess the gender of the person whose face they're looking at.
- agentdrtran 5y ago
  Misgendering people intentionally is transphobic, and systems of this nature behave this way. For many trans people getting an ID to correctly reflect their name and gender is extremely difficult and can go for months/years without it being corrected; companies like Proctor U don't care about the problems this causes: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/exam-surveillance-tools-remote-learning https://www.teenvogue.com/story/exam-surveillance-tools-remo...

captn3m0 5y ago

I followed the references to find the actual argument behind calling surveillance proctoring all of the above, and these are the relevant bits[0]: >At the beginning of a test, these products ask students to verify their identity by matching their appearance with a photo ID. As Os Keyes has demonstrated, facial recognition has a terrible history with gender[x]. This means that a software asking students to verify their identity is compromising for students who identify as trans, non-binary, or express their gender in ways counter to cis/heteronormativity. If a student’s gender expression or name on their ID are different from their current gender expression or name, the algorithm may flag them as suspicious. When this happens, they may have to undergo another level of scrutiny to authenticate their identity, an already common and traumatic experience for trans and gender non-conforming students. If these students are not alerted of this possibility before the test begins, it may force them to either discontinue the test and risk their grade, or out themselves to their course owner when they may not want to, risking more trauma and discrimination including being denied financial aid, being forced to leave their institution, or have their lives put in physical danger. >The Eugenic Gaze is a combination of white supremacy, sexism, ableism, cis/heteronormativity, and xenophobia. When we apply the Eugenic Gaze using technology, the way we do with algorithmic test proctoring, we’re able to codify and reinforce all of those oppressive systems while avoiding equity-based critiques because of our belief in the neutrality of data and technology. Their recommendations are quite reasonable: >Don’t use algorithmic test proctoring. Instead, focus on pedagogical techniques that you can use to design assessments, online or in person, that draw from personal experience or require students to apply concepts in unique contexts. If you have to use algorithmic test proctoring, make sure students know about the test settings and ID requirement well before they take a test, and assure them that you will not take any behavior flagged as “suspicious” into consideration that isn’t described explicitly in the syllabus. The GP link[1] instead calls out "Facial Recognition Tech", and "Algorithmic Proctoring" as being too biased and follows up with a petition[2] to ban these entirely. [0]: https://hybridpedagogy.org/our-bodies-encoded-algorithmic-test-proctoring-in-higher-education/ https://hybridpedagogy.org/our-bodies-encoded-algorithmic-te... [1]: https://library.auraria.edu/news/2021/why-online-test-proctoring-biased-expert https://library.auraria.edu/news/2021/why-online-test-procto... [2]: https://www.sheaswauger.com/post/petition-to-ban-facial-recognition-and-algorithmic-proctoring https://www.sheaswauger.com/post/petition-to-ban-facial-reco... [x]: https://ironholds.org/resources/papers/agr_paper.pdf https://ironholds.org/resources/papers/agr_paper.pdf "The Misgendering Machines: Trans/HCI Implications of Automatic Gender Recognition"

camgunz 5y ago

It's not news that facial recognition is best at white male-presenting faces and bad at all the others. ProctorU is also pretty hard to use for the differently abled. I think you just reflexively dismissed this because you saw a basket of words that normally go along with things you disagree with, but the argument is pretty solid.

handrous 5y ago
> It's not news that facial recognition is best at white male-presenting faces Really? On the male part? I'd have expected it to do best with women, because I'd have figured facial hair is more difficult to deal with than a wider varieties of hair styles.

pdpi 5y ago

It's important to note that none of these things are necessarily done deliberately (though "white supremacy" is perhaps a bad way to express "racism that benefits white people specifically"). Other than transphobia, either the linked article, or the letter linked in that article provide evidence for all of the accusations. Facial recognition software that doesn't handle dark skin well intrinsically treats different ethnicities differently, in this case disadvantaging non-white people. Many of the markers for "suspicious behaviour" that are used to detect cheating are also present in people with both mental and physical health conditions. Dealing poorly with headware has an outsized influence for non-white women (who are likeliest to wear headwear that obstructs the face). Again, I wouldn't chalk any of this up to deliberate bias against any of these groups, but it's all bias anonetheless.

ygjb 5y ago
> (though "white supremacy" is perhaps a bad way to express "racism that benefits white people specifically") Can you explain how racism that benefits white people specifically, as enabled through either direct, explicit bias in policies or laws, or indirect, implicit bias through a lack of diversity when conducting research on human computer interactions, or training corpus used for machine learning is not explicitly white supremacy? These types of issues have been mainstream and well documented that they are at the centre of a 2009 episode of a sitcom (Better Off Ted, Racial Sensitivity), among many other more conventional studies of the phenomenon. After decades of research (and centuries of practical observation) how is it even possible to handwave away systemic racism and bias "that benefits white people specifically" as anything other that white supremacy? Edit: I accidentally left out the italicized part of the first question.
- fabianhjr 5y ago
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  - ygjb 5y ago
    Yes, I totally get that, unfortunately I accidentally left out part of the first question in an edit :(

ygjb 5y ago

I mean, it's an article about how a technology is negatively impacting marginalized groups, and cites research that backs those claims. It makes sense to cite the groups and practices most impacted by it. You could read the research and refute it, or you could just bluster about things. I know you tried to expand on it in your comment below, but minimizing the specific concerns raised to "isms" and ignoring that at least two of the references in the articles linked and their references for the actual research addressed at least the socioeconomic portion of it, illustrates that you only applied your surface level perspective and criticism.

908B64B197 5y ago

> Things cannot simply be bad/user hostile/privacy invading, etc. In this case, the algorithm is actually bad for all ethnicities [0]. It's just that it's extremely bad for black students (fails half the time) and just regular bad for everyone else (fails a quarter of the time). [0] https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/8/22374386/proctorio-racial-bias-issues-opencv-facial-detection-schools-tests-remote-learning https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/8/22374386/proctorio-racial-...