Facial Recognition Systems Are Even More Biased Than We Thought
A new project called Gender Shades creates a new benchmark data set that takes both biological sex and race into account to measure three commercial face classification AI algorithms from IBM, Microsoft, and the Chinese startup Face++ (whose facial recognition technology is used by Alibaba). These types of algorithms are widely used to read faces on security cameras, during immigration, in criminal justice, and even in products like glasses for visually impaired people.
The resulting study shows that all of these real-world algorithms have significantly lower accuracy when evaluating dark female faces than any other type of face. It’s troubling proof that the AI already at work in our daily lives is deeply biased–and that we need to demand greater diversity in the people who build these algorithms and more transparency about how they work.
The sudden death of the website
I am going to make a bold prediction based on my work with 18,000 companies and bringing conversational commerce to life: In 2018, we will see the first major brand shut down its website. The brand will shift how it connects with consumers — to conversations, with a combination of bots and humans, through a messaging front end like SMS or Facebook. We are already working with several large brands to make this a reality.
When the first website ends, the dominoes will fall fast. This will have a positive impact on most companies in transforming how they conduct e-commerce and provide customer care. For Google, however, this will be devastating.
Confessing Sin in the Midst of Suffering
I was tempted to ignore my sin, to justify it as if I only needed to confess sin when things were going well for me. But complaining doesn’t start or stop being a sin based on how justified I feel in my complaint. In the midst of very deep suffering, I found that acknowledging my sin didn’t create a new weight for me to carry on top of all my other burdens. Instead, it actually LIFTED some of the burden. And that is the profound beauty of the gospel of Christ.
5 Habits to Improve Your Online Security Without Software
- Be skeptical
- Is it too good to be true?
- Go to the source
- Question “urgent” decisions
- Confirm the other party’s identity
To Improve Your Storytelling Skills, Use Abraham Lincoln as Inspiration
The speech, of course, is Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. But although you know it well, what you might not realize about “four scores and seven years ago . . .” is that Lincoln’s oration followed one of the most effective story structures you can use–the structure that storytelling expert Shawn Callahan calls “the clarity story.”
The 25 best icebreaker questions for team-building at work
Given this, at Know Your Company, we put a lot of thought (over four years worth of research and fine-tuning!) into crafting get-to-know-you questions that would be as non-cheesy as possible, and elicit meaningful and memorable responses from the team. I get emails all the time from CEOs who’ll tell me, “Wow, Claire, I had no idea this question would get such a reaction from our team.”
Among the hundreds of get-to-know-you questions our software has, I wanted to share with you the top twenty-five…
Woman climbs into x-ray machine because she didn’t want to leave her bag
This is the moment a passenger climbed into an x-ray machine because she did not trust train security staff with her handbag. An unbelievable photograph shows the women on all fours on a conveyor belt as she follows her bag as it passes through the security scanner.