Journal article
There is an elephant in the room: towards a critique on the use of fairness in biometrics
- Abstract:
- The proliferation of biometric systems in our societies is shaping public debates around its political, social and ethical implications. Yet, whilst concerns towards the racialised use of this technology have been on the rise, the field of biometrics remains unperturbed by these debates. Despite the lack of critical analysis, algorithmic fairness has recently been adopted by biometrics. Different studies have been published to understand and mitigate demographic bias in biometric systems, without analysing the political consequences. In this paper, we offer a critical reading of recent debates about biometric fairness and show its detachment from political debates. Building on previous fairness demonstrations, we prove that biometrics will be always biased. Yet, we claim algorithmic fairness cannot distribute justice in scenarios which are broken or whose intended purpose is to discriminate. By focusing on demographic biases rather than examine how these systems reproduce historical and political injustices, fairness has overshadowed the elephant in the room of biometrics.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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- Files:
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 1.3MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1007/s43681-022-00249-2
Authors
- Publisher:
- Springer
- Journal:
- AI and Ethics More from this journal
- Volume:
- 3
- Issue:
- 4
- Pages:
- 1407-1422
- Publication date:
- 2022-12-22
- Acceptance date:
- 2022-12-05
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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2730-5961
- ISSN:
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2730-5953
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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1317032
- Local pid:
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pubs:1317032
- Deposit date:
-
2022-12-23
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Valdivia et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2022
- Rights statement:
- Copyright © 2022, The Author(s). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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