I'm not handwaving anything away. It's just that I don't think all racism is the same.
White supremacy, to me, implies explicit, militant, proactive racism. People who might very well be proud of the fact they're racists.
This story is about a software system that (among many other issues) doesn't work well with darker skin tones in low light. Especially in light of all the other failure modes, I'd ascribe that to carelessness or indiference, mixed with pressure to reduce false negatives at the expense of more false positives. I wouldn't be surprised if training data and/or testing were filmed in an office setting with the amount of light you expect there, and they never ran across the issues with dark skin interacting poorly with the amount of lighting a student would have a home.
> White supremacy, to me, implies explicit, militant, proactive racism. People who might very well be proud of the fact they're racists.
That is only half of the story of white supremacy though. The other half is the entrenched systems and biases baked into those systems that largely benefit white people, and that train people, through experience, to prioritize preserving the existing systems and status quo.
Not considering the fact that there is a well documented history over the last 20 years of tech companies and business in general prioritizing the experiences of the white majority, at the expense of people of colour, is largely the reason why you can "wouldn't be surprised if training data and/or testing were filmed in an office setting with the amount of light you expect there, and they never ran across the issues with dark skin interacting poorly with the amount of lighting a student would have a home.", and not consider that being the norm, or even acceptable as being indicative of white supremacy.
Those biases may not always, and only impact people of colour, but they do overwhelmingly benefit white people. That's the entire point of the article that OP shared, and the references the author of that post uses to back their claims.
White supremacy, to me, implies explicit, militant, proactive racism. People who might very well be proud of the fact they're racists.
This story is about a software system that (among many other issues) doesn't work well with darker skin tones in low light. Especially in light of all the other failure modes, I'd ascribe that to carelessness or indiference, mixed with pressure to reduce false negatives at the expense of more false positives. I wouldn't be surprised if training data and/or testing were filmed in an office setting with the amount of light you expect there, and they never ran across the issues with dark skin interacting poorly with the amount of lighting a student would have a home.