Computer programs recognise white men better than black women

SOFTWARE that recognises faces has bounded ahead in recent years, propelled by a boom in a form of artificial intelligence called deep learning (see article). Several firms now offer face recognition as a commercial service, via their respective clouds. The ability to recognise in faces such things as an individual's sex has improved too, and this is also commercially available. The algorithms involved have, however, long been suspected of bias. Specifically, they are alleged to be better at pro...