| This seems like a pretty poor article on a pretty poor research subject. The way I read it is something like this... Some researchers got their hands on software that purports to do similar stuff to what self driving cars might also do, but crucially isn't the same as what the cars actually use, and then extrapolate the results into the headline-like title of the research paper: "Dark-Skin Individuals Are at More Risk on the Street: Unmasking Fairness Issues of Autonomous Driving Systems". That's justified isn't it? After all, all software in a category is more or less the same program and the car company software and their research subject software all runs on computers? Right? Must be valid... clearly you can make factual assertions on that kind of extrapolation about computer systems and software. Then some bright-eyed-bushy-tailed reporter comes along and applies the criticality of the typical college educated/professional journalist, which is to say they carefully considered the headline they could write, but otherwise just took the word of the researchers that something resembling knowledge was actually gained by the study. News is delivered! Job done! Look, sarcasm aside, could I have read/understood things incorrectly? Sure... I'm not an expert in this field. Could this be a problem in production-used-in-the-real-world pedestrian detection systems? Sure. But insofar as I can tell, the best the paper could be telling us is that racial biases in pedestrian detection systems is a viable possibility: not the assertion that "Dark-Skin Individuals Are at More Risk on the Street". It might be true, but I don't think these researchers know that any better than I do. Of course, "Dark-Skin Individuals Could Be at More Risk on the Street" isn't nearly so catchy or attention grabbing, is it? And who knows... maybe this research team should pick up the search for low temperature/low pressure super-conductivity... sounds like they have the right temperament. |