Apparently, the varied systems in use to try to do facial recognition are ridden with gender and racial bias. This is perhaps something that we might want to do something about — luckily we’ve already got a system in place which does something about shoddy products: It’s called free market competition in a capitalist economy.

The particular complaint seems to be aimed at Amazon and their Rekognition service. The system works just fine at identifying white-bread men like me, but has a bit more problem with female faces and starts to go further haywire the darker the feminine visage, with entirely unacceptable portions being called out as male. Apparently, this is all so bad that Amazon should just stop selling the service to government or law enforcement — which is to horribly misunderstand how product development actually happens.