[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.

[cycomanic]

I always cringe when reading about "race" in the US, the term really (intentionally? ) gives the impression that there is a clear genetic demarcation between people based on skin color.

The US is the only country I am aware of who still uses this term, everywhere else was using some thinking like ethnicity to indicate different culture, origin...

[lowdose]

The UN pushed from the 1950 to replace race with culture. Many people around the world now say "But he is from a different culture." Instead of "But he is from a different race."

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0031322050034783...

[centimeter]

> little basis in the scientific reality of human genetic variation

This meme dates back to a loose claim made by R. Lewontin back in the 70s. In fact, you can very precisely and reliably recreate the "intuitive" human racial categorization using unsupervised algorithms, like doing multi-dimensional clustering over fixation indices. (It does not work using single-dimensional clustering, which is what Lewontin was talking about.)

Modern biologists usually talk in terms of clines rather than races, but this is just using the first derivative instead of the zeroth - you'll get the same result either way.

> Africa actually has more human genetic variation than anywhere else.

SNP diversity has ~nothing to do with phenotypic variance.

[claudeganon]

Of course the question here is recreate whose “intuitive racial categorization” because all of that is historically and culturally specific. Saying it’s possible for a computer to recreate these categorizations presumes that the categorization has some objective reality outside of this when they’re just a variable heuristic determined by all those inputs.

[centimeter]

> all of that is historically and culturally specific

Not really - almost everyone can agree on "middle eastern/north african", "east asian", "south asian", "black african", "white", etc. If you force people to pick a single-digit number of major categories, they're probably going to come up with the same categories that k-means in fixation space would.

[claudeganon]

This is an evidence-free supposition, consistent with your pattern across this thread of making broad claims without anything to support them. You’ve provided no proof that k-means on a representative sample of phenotypic variation in the groups you cite would return this result.

That almost everyone can agree on these categories is also contrary to reality. For example, many of who you describe as East Asians consider themselves racially distinct both within their societies and from their nearby neighbors. Also, what major categories do mixed race people fall inside?

[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.

[Gibbon1]

I think there is by far more mitochondrial DNA variations inside Africa than outside.

[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.