Facial recognition technology does not yet have “the diversity it needs” and has “inherent biases”, a top Google executive has warned.
The remarks, from the firm’s director of cloud computing, Diane Greene, came after rival Amazon’s software wrongly identified 28 members of Congress, disproportionately people of colour, as police suspects.
Google, which has not opened its facial recognition technology to public use, was working on gathering vast sums of data to improve reliability, Ms Greene said.
However, she refused to discuss the company’s controversial work with the military.
“Bad things happen when I talk about Maven,” Ms Greene said, referring to a soon-to-be abandoned project with the US military to develop artificial intelligence technology for drones.
After considerable employee pressure, including resignations, Google said it would not renew its contract with the Pentagon after it lapses some time in 2019.
The firm has not commented on the deal since, only to release a set of “AI principles” that stated it would not use artificial intelligence or machine learning to create weapons.
