Facial Recognition Systems

Today we’re talking about facial recognition systems. These are technologies which can recognise and analyse your face. Used for both identification (i.e. on Facebook in photos, on security doors with restricted access) and for reading emotions (i.e this film makes you happy, this product makes you sad), they are becoming more and more common, and… Read More

Today we’re talking about facial recognition systems. These are technologies which can recognise and analyse your face. Used for both identification (i.e. on Facebook in photos, on security doors with restricted access) and for reading emotions (i.e this film makes you happy, this product makes you sad), they are becoming more and more common, and perhaps without you even noticing it.

I’m joined by Dr. Lisa Murphy, a clinical fellow at Public Health England, who wants to use technology to improve population health, clinical care and NHS operations. She is also a fellow at Newspeak House, which is a community in East London which we all make fairly regular use of. I’m also with Rula Awad, the founder of AIPoli. She is an advocate for information and algorithmic transparency, particularly when it comes to political and social content. Rula has built facial recognition systems in the past, and so can give us insiders knowledge on how bias is perpetuated throughout these systems.

Facial Recognition and Medicine

Diagnosing genetic systems – read more here.

Read this medical journal article about using facial recognition systems to predict cardiovascular disease.

Shopping and Marketing

We mentioned an article on how shops are using facial recognition to improve their marketing, product placement and advertising. Read more here.

Algorithmic Bias

Rula mentioned the Gender Shades study. Read more about it here.

We still find bias in these algorithms – in January 2019 it was found that facial recognition systems still find it hard to identify coloured and female faces. Read more here.

Wanna contact us?

Email me or contact me – alice [at] twaaats [dot] com or @alicelthwaite on Twitter. Lisa is @LisaMurphy107 and Rula can be found here @rula_awad.

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