The ethics surrounding the use of facial recognition technology are under increasing scrutiny as more law enforcement agencies utilize it. Shobita Parthasarathy, professor of public policy and director of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program, explained that although the technology is thought to have less bias than a human, it still has its flaws.
“I think it’s harder for us cognitively to understand that the technology reflects human biases,” she said. “The technologies are often sold as being more objective. We scrutinize these kinds of technologies even less because we assume that they’re not going to be biased. We’re only really hearing about cases of misidentification that are reported because there are threats of lawsuits. I think it’s probably happening much more frequently.”
