THE government must review their current rollout of facial recognition systems until evidence of racial bias is removed completely, trade unionists demanded today.

Delegates at the TUC Black Workers conference highlighted how the practice is an infringement on civil liberties, but also leads to people with darker skin being wrongfully identified as criminals by new police cameras that scan faces against a database. 

The conference also heard about how the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence has inbuilt racial bias in its designs, and agreed to lobby government and regulators.

CWU’s Mark Anthony Bastiani highlighted research showing the disproportionate misidentification of black suspects through facial recognition in comparison to white faces, while Dominic Smith-Jones of Prospect said that inaccuracies were because “AI doesn’t recognise us, especially women, because no-one thought to teach it to.”

“Until we’re properly represented, the adoption of these technologies for the purposes of automating our own oppression should be resisted,” Mr Smith-Jones said. 

On AI, Unison’s Adejare Oyewole said that systems “are not neutral,” adding: “They are designed within a society shaped by racial inequality. 

“And too often they reproduce the same inequalities in digital form. 

“Innovation without equality is injustice by another name.”