White Face Only Recognition Technology

By now, anybody who keeps abreast of tech news has heard by now that Hewlett Packard’s face recognition software doesn’t recognize black faces. But that’s okay. Glitches and bugs are an inevitable fact of life when it comes to technology.  And to its credit, HP has quickly developed a patch kit for their customers with a heavier melanin content in their skin. Simply open the patch kit and remove the facial interface recognition enhancement module (pictured above).  Insert the module over any visage that does not meet the minimum requirements for human recognition, and then engage your HP computer. And just like magic the problem is solved!

Until the patch arrives, HP should modify their marketing strategy. Computer users should note that the face tracking software is not intended for all audiences. Only HP’s most special users can be recognized by their special technology. And it’s just a coincidence of technology that all of the special users that can be recognized are not recognizably black.

Seriously, this is a prime example why it is so important for companies to have a racially diverse work force in a racially diverse work environment. This doesn’t mean compensating for the lack of black professionals by hiring a bunch of black janitors to bring some kind of balance to the mix. Not even all the black janitors in the headquarters building would have cleaned up this mess. You can’t test software with a broom in one hand and a garbage bag in the other.

If HP had committed itself to a more diverse work force, if the company had more black people participating in their software development, management, and test processes, they may have discovered this embarrassing glitch. Maybe HP is just another one of those huge conglomerates that thinks if they tailor everything to the racially generic dominant community that is comprised of about seventy percent of white people. It is typical corporate marketing strategy to target the racial majority and leave the rest to either conform to the majority or go away in search of their own devices.

Leave it to HP to actually invent racist technology.  While I seriously doubt if Hewlett Packard made a conscious decision to develop software that would not recognize black faces, I do find it believable that it is a matter of racial insensitivity that the company never bothered to assure that their software would recognize all faces.

Believe it or not, that would be much more acceptable than the other possibility that the company knew that the software wouldn’t recognize black faces and didn’t care. It would be kind of like Ford’s decision way back when it discovered that its Pinto Pony would erupt in flames in an accident when a certain series of unfortunate conditions were made. But instead of pulling the product and making the safety of its customers a top priority, Ford decided it would be a more profitable choice to put their dangerous product on the market and use their legal department to settle any lawsuits that might arise from their oversight.

This is just an analogy. Nobody is saying that the computer giant’s decision to market a computer that acts racist and overlooks black people has the same dreadfulness as a car company’s decision to market a dangerous product regardless of how it might injure or kill. But surely one must admit that the callousness of such acts is very similar. Knowingly putting out a product that would work for white people but not black people only adds to the long list of disparities that falls along racial lines that seems to perpetually favor the dominant community.

If HP made a car like the Ford Pinto they would imbed their face recognition technology in some kind of webcam in the dashboard in order for the car to recognize that there is life on board.  And judging by HP’s track record, chances are the car would explode only when there was black people in it.  And the vast majority wouldn’t even give a damn.  People will chalk it up to just another one of those unfortunate and coincidental examples of racial disparity.

But like I said before, I’m willing to give HP the benefit of the doubt and assume that they, like a huge chunk of America, are incompetent when it comes to the development of quality products that are to be offered across the racial spectrum.

It’s not a total loss. There might be a bright side for black people (pun intended). If technology ever advances to a point when there are T-800 Terminators coming off an assembly line somewhere and they’re all programmed to kill humans, people in the black community might have a chance if those androids make use of HP’s face recognition technology.

But then again, knowing Hewlett Packard, the day they sell that technology to whatever will pass for the fictional Cyberdyne Systems Corporation, that face recognition technology will be so perfected that it’ll pick out a black face on a moonless night a hundred miles away in the middle of a forest behind a tree. The shitty end of the stick seems to be the black community’s lot in life.