UK passport photo checker shows bias against dark-skinned women

October 7, 2020

The UK passport photo checker system has been found to exhibit bias against dark-skinned women. This underscores the need for safe and secure AI practices, especially when it comes to governance and guardrails for AI. For those interested in shaping harm prevention strategies for trustworthy AI, consider joining HISPI Project Cerebellum TAIM (Measure function) via JOIN US.

Harmful incidents like this one emphasize the importance of our AI incident database in mapping and understanding AI governance challenges.

Matched TAIM controls

Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

MEASURE 2.10 — similarity 0.726, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MEASURE 2.6 — similarity 0.715, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 1.6 — similarity 0.709, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Alleged deployer: uk-home-office
Alleged developer: uk-home-office
Alleged harmed parties: dark-skinned-people, dark-skinned-women

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/87

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.