A US government study confirms most face recognition systems are racist

Almost 200 face recognition algorithms--a majority in the industry--had worse performance on nonwhite faces, according to a landmark study. What they tested: The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) tested every algorithm on two of the most common tasks for face recognition. The first, known as "one-to-one" matching, involves matching a photo of someone to another photo of the same person in a database. This is used to unlock smartphones or check passports, for example. The second, known as "one-to-many" searching, involves determining whether a photo of someone has any match in a database.