Racism is discrimination based on skin colour, which is literally what this system is doing.

It's a pity they didn't question the Home Office more on what they have done since 2019 to fix the bug since they knew existed from launch — e.g. how many times has the algorithm been retrained since then with good passport photos (since the issue still seems unresolved)

EDIT: Turns out from the New Scientist article linked that it actually launched in 2016, misread from the BBC one.

I’m not racist, I’m just biased against people with dark skin?

Are you trained with poor training data? My comment was on parent's statement. I did not say racism does not exist, but it is not the only word for situations where there is a bias involving pepole's color.

This is bias against people with darker skin that disadvantages their lives in a way that people with lighter skin do not experience. How is that not an example of racism?

Equalling racism with anything that disadvantages pepole of a skin color, regardless of cause, devalues the word. Racism used to mean that there was a belief that certain races were superior to others, or a belief of that nature involved. It is simply not accurate to apply it to any circumstance regarding discrimination of skin color. You need to look at if there was an intent or a conscious prejudice.

You are talking about racism at the individual level. That compounds itself into institutional or systemic racism of which this is an example. This is a government system that puts more obstacles in the way of darker skinned individuals because during the development of the system, the developers probably never even considered the importance of this system working for anyone but lighter skinned people. Lighter skinned people were important and darker skinned people weren't. That is institutional racism.

Also I'm not aware of any credible authority on the subject that would say "intent or a conscious prejudice" is any type of requirement for something to be considered racist.

You just need to look in a thesaurus or dictionary to find a description of the word along the lines of "the belief that some races are innately superior to others because of hereditary characteristics" (Collins), "the belief that certain races of people are by birth and nature superior to others" (Merriam-Webster) or "Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to physical appearance and can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another." (first sentence on Wikipedia). Core to this, it includes a human judgment. Describing all kinds of discrimination on color to racism is similar to calling involuntary mistakes, or even unanticipated effects of other actions, that breaks things "sabotage".

It sounds like you stopped reading all those sources as soon as you got a definition you liked and didn't bother scrolling to get a complete picture of the term.

From Collins[1]

>any program or practice of racial discrimination, segregation, etc., specif., such a program or practice that upholds the political or economic domination of one race over another or others

From Merriam-Webster[2]:

>the systemic oppression of a racial group to the social, economic, and political advantage of another

From Wikipedia[3]

>Institutional racism (also known as structural racism, state racism or systemic racism) is racial discrimination by governments, corporations, religions, or educational institutions or other large organizations with the power to influence the lives of many individuals. Stokely Carmichael is credited for coining the phrase institutional racism in the late 1960s. He defined the term as "the collective failure of an organization to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin".

Racism isn't purely about the belief that one race is superior to another. A system that oppresses one race in favor of another is racist. This example meets the definitions of all three sources.

[1] - https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/raci...

[2] - https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/racism

[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism#Institutional

No it doesn't. It just widens the discussion to also include what oppression means.

Your argument puts "poor training data", which I originally commented on, in the same bin as for example apartheid. Widen it to that use devalues the word.

I have made my point and have no interest to continue this discussion further.

>It just widens the discussion to also include what oppression means.

Those first two quotes are literally dictionary definitions of racism. You are free to disagree, but you aren't just disagreeing with me. You are disagreeing with the dictionary.

> Racism used to mean that there was a belief [...]

Yes, the key word is "used". And the point why it isn't is because we pay now more attention to the target of racism than the perpetrator.

> You need to look at if there was an intent or a conscious prejudice.

Or alternatively, you need to look at what happens to the people being subjected to racism. Practically no one wants to be seen as a racist anymore. Intent and conscious prejudice is now hidden.

In my eyes, that is progress. We move forward from assigning guilt to trying to improve the situation for people subjected to racism.

I kind of doubt, that it will mean, more people would be happy or neutral being called a racists.

Doorways in Japan tend to be biased against 6'2" people. Is that height discrimination?