Racial Discrimination in Imaging Technologies

This Zoom-based session will begin with a presentation of the history of racist imaging technologies from the mid-20th Century to recent years, looking at how photographic technologies, image recognition systems, and image analysis software have been developed to privilege whiteness. Following this, we will use breakout rooms to address current and emerging issues, such as facial recognition technology programmed to identify subjects’ racial identities, and optical recognition algorithms than make it more likely for autonomous vehicles to strike darker-skinned pedestrians. Closing discussion will be on anti-racist engineering practices.