Equity No-Nos

In a rapidly changing, technological society, more and more people are turning to STEM fields for answers to their everyday problems. Still, without mentors, Black people are left out of STEM degrees, careers, and decisions at every step along the way. In 2018, Amazon managed to commit a diversity “no-no”. Their artificial intelligence (AI) software, Amazon Rekognition, was developed and marketed to several groups, including sports organizations, public news broadcasters, and law enforcement (for use in fighting crime). Closer examination of the Amazon Rekognition software revealed that it could not accurately recognize darker women of color. This meant that the software mistook darker-skinned women for men 31 percent of the time. Joy Buolamwini, a Black MIT research assistant, found similar racial biases among facial recognition software at IBM and Microsoft. Her research and discoveries pushed many of these companies to fix the problem and investigate what went wrong. Every time something like this happens (think fashion faux pas like Gucci’s blackface turtleneck in 2019), we should immediately question who was or instead wasn’t in the room when this product was developed, and these decisions were made. This crucial group of people was overlooked? In 2020, it seems like equity “no-no’s” aren’t going anywhere.