facial recognition software misgendering transgenders

quote:

---

The problems can be severe for transgender and nonbinary people because most facial recognition software is programmed to sort people into two groups—male or female. Because these systems aren’t designed with transgender and gender nonconforming people in mind, something as common as catching a flight can become a complicated nightmare. It’s a problem that will only get worse as the TSA moves to a full biometric system at all airports and facial recognition technology spreads.

---

quote:

---

“I couldn't help but be personally, as well as professionally annoyed by the approach that the field took to gender—of assuming these two very monolithic and universal categories of gendered experience,” Keyes told me over the phone. “Pretty much every paper I read did it.”

---

quote:

---

They said that one way to solve this problem is to do a better job of teaching social sciences such as ethics and gender studies to computer science students. The more inherent biases are studied, the easier they are to avoid when designing new technologies. “The average [computer science] student is never going to take a gender studies class,” Keyes said. “They're not probably going to even take an ethics class. It'd be good if they did.”

---