It’s more likely to fail because…physics. The sensor on your webcam is only so big, and can only capture so much light. Darker faces require more lighting to capture details. Photography isn’t racist, it’s physical limitations that come into play.
> Photography isn’t racist, it’s physical limitations that come into play.
I wanna pull this apart a bit because I think it's a good opportunity to talk about how systemic bias gets started. Digital sensor evolution is path-dependent. Technologists developed photo-sites that have "enough" dynamic range for most uses before moving on to increase the resolution on a sensor. What exactly is "enough" depends on your test data.
The sensor on a webcam is only "so big" as you say - but how that sensor balances resolution and photo-site count depends on what conditions they consider acceptable. We could build web cams that would see more pigmented faces better - there is no fundamental limitation in the technology itself. It's that a series of decisions have been made over years of development, generally without people thinking specifically about race at all, and we've arrived at a status quo that has adverse outcomes for people with different skin tones.
There was a similar process that happened with film photography[1]. Not that film, as a technology, is unable to capture dark skin - but that the development standards that were tested and distributed were designed for lighter skin.
Like, I agree that the webcams we have aren't intentionally 'racist.' But I do think that the status quo that has led everyone to accept this balance of dynamic range and resolution is reflective of valuing people with lighter skin more.
A closely related story that will also resonate with you: early microphones were tuned for male voices, which led to truly a lot of harm to women. It's just a matter of physics, as people are fond of saying. Mediocre technologists make mediocre products that were only validated for people like them.
A) The major issue is not the sensors, it's the lack of emphasis of ML training data for darker skin.
B) Even if it were simply physics at play, requiring the use of a system known to have physical constraints against darker skin causing failing grades purely on that metric is still pretty racist.
