Software To Recognize Faces Is Found To Be Biased
臉部辨識系統 有種族性別「偏見」
By Natasha Singer and Cade Metz

The majority of commercial facial-recognition systems exhibit bias, according to a study from a federal agency released recently, underscoring questions about a technology increasingly used by police departments and federal agencies to identify suspected criminals.
根據美國聯邦機構新近發表的研究結果，多數商用臉部辨識系統存在偏差，凸顯出這種科技的問題，而警察部門和聯邦機構使用這項科技辨識可疑罪犯的程度正不斷增高。

The systems falsely identified African American and Asian faces 10 times to 100 times more than Caucasian faces, the National Institute of Standards and Technology reported. Among a database of photos used by law enforcement agencies in the United States, the highest error rates came in identifying Native Americans, the study found.
國家標準及科技研究所指出，比起白人臉孔，這些系統錯誤辨識非裔美國人和亞洲臉孔的機率高出10至100倍。研究發現，在美國執法單位使用的照片資料庫中，辨識美國原住民的錯誤率最高。

The technology also had more difficulty identifying women than men. And it falsely identified older adults up to 10 times more than middle-aged adults.
這項科技辨識女性也比男性更困難，而且辨識老人的錯誤率高達中年人的10倍。

The new report comes at a time of mounting concern from lawmakers and civil rights groups over the proliferation of facial recognition. Proponents view it as an important tool for catching criminals and tracking terrorists. Tech companies market it as a convenience that can be used to help identify people in photos or in lieu of a password to unlock smartphones.
這份新報告發表之際，國會議員和公民運動團體對臉部辨識的普及正日益感到憂慮。支持者視它為抓捕罪犯和追蹤恐怖分子的重要工具，科技公司將它行銷成方便好用的東西，可辨識照片中的人或作為密碼解鎖智慧手機。

Civil liberties experts, however, warn that the technology – which can be used to track people at a distance without their knowledge – has the potential to lead to ubiquitous surveillance, chilling freedom of movement and speech. Last year, San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley in California and the Massachusetts communities of Somerville and Brookline banned government use of the technology.
然而，公民自由專家警告，這項科技能在人們不知情的狀況下從一定距離外追蹤他們，有可能導致無所不在的監控，壓抑行動和言論自由。去年，加州的舊金山、奧克蘭和柏克萊，以及麻州的薩默維爾和布魯克萊恩等社區，皆明令禁止政府使用此一科技。

“One false match can lead to missed flights, lengthy interrogations, watch list placements, tense police encounters, false arrests or worse,” Jay Stanley, a policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement. “Government agencies including the FBI, Customs and Border Protection and local law enforcement must immediately halt the deployment of this dystopian technology.”
「一個錯誤的比對，就可能導致錯過班機、冗長的訊問、列入觀察名單、與警察緊張的遭遇、錯誤逮捕甚至更糟的狀況。」美國公民自由聯盟的政策分析師傑．史丹利在聲明中這麼說。「包括聯邦調查局、海關及邊境保護局和地方執法單位等政府機構，必須立即停止部署這項敵托邦科技。」

The federal report is one of the largest studies of its kind. The researchers had access to more than 18 million photos of about 8.5 million people from American mug shots, visa applications and border-crossing databases.
這份聯邦報告是同類報告中規模最大者之一。研究人員取用來自美國嫌犯大頭照、簽證申請及跨越邊境資料庫中，約850萬人的1800萬張以上的照片。

The National Institute of Standards and Technology tested 189 facial-recognition algorithms from 99 developers, representing the majority of commercial developers. They included systems from Microsoft, biometric technology companies like Cognitec, and Megvii, an artificial intelligence company in China.
國家標準及科技研究所測試來自99個開發商的189個臉部辨識演算程式，涵蓋大多數商用開發商，包括微軟系統，生物科技公司如Cognitec，以及中國人工智慧公司曠視科技。

The federal report confirms earlier studies from MIT that reported that facial-recognition systems from some large tech companies had much lower accuracy rates in identifying the female and darker-skinned faces than the white male faces.
這份聯邦報告證實麻省理工學院先前的研究結果，一些大型科技公司的臉部辨識系統，辨識女性和較深膚色臉孔的正確率，比辨識白人男性低得多。

原文參照：
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/19/technology/facial-recognition-bias.html

2020-01-12．聯合報．D4．紐約時報賞析．莊蕙嘉譯 樂慧生核稿

說文解字看新聞 莊蕙嘉

本文報導臉部辨識系統經研究後發現誤差不小，facial recognition是近年熱門科技，屬於生物辨識技術（biometrics）的一種，利用電腦和人工智慧記錄及分析人臉特徵，例如瞳孔距離、骨骼位置、眼口鼻大小等，進而比對並辨識身分的技術。

recognize和identify大致算是同義詞，都有「辨識」之意，若要細分，前者是know who that person is or what that thing is，後者則是know someone/something and can distinguish them from others。

舉例來說，警方向目擊者出示照片，詢問目擊者是否recognize照片中的人。另一種情境是，警方要求目擊者看過單向鏡後的數人，identify是否有哪一個人出現在案發現場。

此外，recognize也有「認可」的讚賞之意，如recognize A as an outstanding scientist。identify另有「認同」之意，如A identifies himself with the (religious/political/ethnic) group。

Earth Science Has a Whiteness Problem
美地科學界 9成博士是白人
By Emma Goldberg

When Arianna Varuolo-Clarke was growing up, her favorite evenings were spent watching the Weather Channel with her grandfather. She wanted to “chase thunderstorms” and understand where tornadoes came from, she said. She decided to become an atmospheric scientist. In 2014, she landed an internship at the National Center for Atmospheric Research as a college sophomore, and quickly realized that her path as a woman of color would not be easy.
亞莉安娜．瓦魯歐洛－克拉克成長過程中，最喜愛的夜晚時光是和祖父一起看氣象頻道節目。她說，想要「追著雷雨跑」，並了解龍捲風從哪來。她決心成為大氣科學家。2014年，她大學二年級時獲得國家大氣研究中心的實習生工作，而且很快就察覺，身為有色人種女性，這條路並不好走。

“You’d walk through the halls and it’s a lot of old white men,” Varuolo-Clarke said. Still, she pushed forward and began her Ph.D. in atmospheric science at Columbia University in 2018.
「穿過一棟又一棟建築物，那兒有許多年長白人男性。」瓦魯歐洛－克拉克說。她仍然奮勇前進，前年在哥倫比亞大學開始大氣科學的博士課程。

The field’s lack of diversity gained new urgency in May when her graduate student cohort was targeted with a series of racist emails. The messages, sent to affiliates of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia by a person outside the community, said that black people were genetically inferior and did not belong in academia.
去年5月像她這種背景的研究所同學成為一連串種族歧視電郵的目標時，這個領域缺乏種族多元性的問題也更顯急迫。這些電郵由社群外的某人寄給哥大「拉蒙多爾蒂地球觀測站」成員，表示黑人基因較差，不屬於學術世界。

It was “hurtful and invalidating” to be told that she didn’t belong in the world that had drawn her in since childhood, Varuolo-Clarke said. “It was an isolated incident. But it brought to the surface what still needs to be done in the field.”
瓦魯歐洛－克拉克說，聽到別人說她不屬於自兒時就吸引她的領域，感覺「受傷且不受肯定」。「這是個孤立事件，但也讓這個領域尚待改進的部分浮上檯面。」

In a commentary last month in Nature Geoscience, Kuheli Dutt, Lamont-Doherty’s assistant director for academic affairs and diversity, wrote that “a lack of diversity and inclusion is the single largest cultural problem facing the geosciences today.”
庫赫里．達特是拉蒙多爾蒂負責學術事務及多元性的助理主任，上個月在「自然地球科學」期刊發表評論文章寫道：「缺乏多元性與包容性，是地球科學界今日面對的最大單一文化問題。」

The geosciences – which include the study of planet Earth, its oceans, its atmosphere and its interactions with human society – are among the least diverse across all fields of science. Nearly 90% of doctoral-degree recipients are white. In the country’s top 100 geoscience departments, people of color hold under 4% of tenured or tenure-track positions. A 2016 survey from the National Science Foundation showed that representation of people of color in geosciences has barely budged in the past four decades, although significant gains have been made in terms of gender balance.
地球科學包括研究行星地球、地球的海洋、大氣層以及地球和人類社會的互動，在所有科學領域中是多元性最低者。近九成取得博士學位者是白人。在全美排名前100的地球科學系所中，取得終身教職與有希望取得終身教職者，有色人種占比不到4%。國家科學基金會2016年的調查顯示，地球科學界有色人種的比例在過去40年來幾乎沒有變化，儘管在性別平衡方面有顯著進步。

Asian-Americans are better represented than other people of color, according to Dutt, accounting for 6% of those earning geoscience doctorates in 2016. Between 1973 and 2016, just 20 Native American women, 69 black women and 241 Hispanic women earned doctorates in the field, of some 22,600 total.
達特指出，亞裔美國人比其他有色人種占比高，在2016年取得地球科學博士學位者中占了6%。1973至2016年間，共約2萬2600人取得地球科學博士學位，其中只有20人是美國原住民女性，69人是非裔女性，241人是西語裔女性。

The field’s lack of diversity begins with a pipeline problem, geoscientists say. National surveys have shown that black people are less likely than white people to participate in outdoor activities.
地球科學家說，這個領域缺乏種族多元性始於管道問題（譯者按：指少數族裔與女性理工科畢業生不足）。全國調查顯示，比起白人，黑人參與戶外活動的可能性較低。

原文參照：
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/23/science/earth-science-diversity-education.html

2020-01-12．聯合報．D4．紐約時報賞析．莊蕙嘉譯 樂慧生核稿