[rockarage]

When you sample from a smaller pool you will make uninformed statements like this. Black/Dark people of the world are not limited to Black people in Atlanta. Bet many people here do not know that there are Black people in this world, some who have naturally blonde hair and some who have blue eyes, google it.

Moreover capturing Black/Dark skin and features requires more accurate light metering & lighting because dark skin absorb more light. There's a lot variance in cheekbones, nose and lips.

Humans' features in general, are more complicated then you realize.

[throwaway391003]

Ok but that can still be true (blonde hair, blue eyes) while there still being much more variations in the white population than in the black population.

I'm curious how many white people there are on earth vs how many black people there are, and other races. A couple google searches didn't give me any easy finds

[Impossible]

Black people can have blond hair and blue eyes also. Common in Melanesians but not unheard of in African Americans either. I had blonde hair when I was a baby and genetically I'm 83% African (average admixture across all Black Americans). An uncle of mine had blue eyes when he was born

[claudeganon]

That’s because “white” and “black” are loose, shifting, ideological constructions with little basis in the scientific reality of human genetic variation. Many “white people” weren’t considered “white” until fairly recently and Africa actually has more human genetic variation than anywhere else.

[user982]

> Ok but that can still be true (blonde hair, blue eyes) while there still being much more variations in the white population than in the black population.

Even the man who coined "Caucasian" as a racial category recognized that there was more physical variance among African populations and individuals than compared with Europeans.

[centimeter]

You've made the one good point that I've seen in these responses, which is that I think all the pictures were sourced from the US. If black Americans are descended from a relatively narrow geographic region in Africa, that could lead to me underestimating phenotypic variance for black people in general. However, the problem would still exist when the technology is deployed in America.

> some who have naturally blonde hair and some who have blue eyes

I know they exist, but we are talking about statistical properties of entire populations, and these people are very rare.

> Humans' features in general, are more complicated then you realize.

It's not about what I realize - it's about what can be mechanically detected.

[rockarage]

What can be mechanically detected is limited to how the data is collected.

You missed this part: "Moreover capturing Black/Dark skin and features require more accurate light metering & lighting because dark skin absorbs more light."

I have to see the images used to train the ML model, to be certain, but based on my experience working in photography and programming, I believe it is more likely than not that they used essentially poor quality images for the training.

Moreover, after the model has been trained, to use the system effectively the facial recognition camera has to be set up to capture both light and dark skin, in the case of dark skin, it typically means not relying on available light alone indoors, an additional camera light must be provided.

The reality is if you want a facial recognition system that accurately detects dark skin it will cost a bit more to do it right.