How Ethical Is It to Rely on Artificial Intelligence with Biased Facial Recognition?

Abstract

This paper examines the ethics and current situation of facial recognition from the perspective of racial and gender equality. Facial recognition is a fairly new image analytics technology. It consists of face detection, which dissociates the face from the background, and facial recognition, which compares unique features of an individual’s face to a database and biometrics of sample faces. The primary ethical concern with this technology is biased teaching. Statistics show that a darker-skinned female is significantly less likely to be detected and recognized with the correct identity than a lighter-skinned male. Many works on this issue, some mentioned and analyzed in this paper, underscore the morally and ethically problematic use of this technology in a wide range of important fields considering that facial recognition technology is still in its infancy, and the consequences of misidentification can be severe.