Skip to Content
Artificial intelligence

Self-driving cars may be more likely to hit you if you have dark skin

March 1, 2019

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology found that state-of-the-art object recognition systems are less accurate at detecting pedestrians with darker skin tones.

Crash-testing: The researchers tested eight image-recognition systems (each trained on a standard data set) against a large pool of pedestrian images. They divided the pedestrians into two groups for lighter and darker skin tones according to the Fitzpatrick skin type scale, a way of classifying human skin color.

Color coded: The detection accuracy of the systems was found to be lower by an average of five percentage points for the group with darker skin. This held true even when controlling for time of day and obstructed view.

Under the hood: Through further analysis, the researchers determined that the bias was probably caused by two things: too few examples of dark-skinned pedetrians and too little emphasis on learning from those examples. They say the bias could be mitigated by adjusting both the data and the algorithm.

An earlier version of this story originally appeared in our AI newsletter The Algorithm. To have it directly delivered to your inbox, sign up here for free.

Deep Dive

Artificial intelligence

Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why.

And that's a problem. Figuring it out is one of the biggest scientific puzzles of our time and a crucial step towards controlling more powerful future models.

OpenAI teases an amazing new generative video model called Sora

The firm is sharing Sora with a small group of safety testers but the rest of us will have to wait to learn more.

Google’s Gemini is now in everything. Here’s how you can try it out.

Gmail, Docs, and more will now come with Gemini baked in. But Europeans will have to wait before they can download the app.

Google DeepMind’s new generative model makes Super Mario–like games from scratch

Genie learns how to control games by watching hours and hours of video. It could help train next-gen robots too.

Stay connected

Illustration by Rose Wong

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review

Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.

Thank you for submitting your email!

Explore more newsletters

It looks like something went wrong.

We’re having trouble saving your preferences. Try refreshing this page and updating them one more time. If you continue to get this message, reach out to us at customer-service@technologyreview.com with a list of newsletters you’d like to receive.