Age and race biases found in autonomous vehicle pedestrian detection systems

Autonomous vehicle makers may need to rethink how pedestrian detection AI models are trained after researchers found age and race biases in vehicle detection systems. In collaboration with colleagues, Dr Jie Zhang from the Department of Informatics at King’s College London, assessed eight artificial intelligence (AI) powered pedestrian detection systems used in autonomous vehicle research. According to Kings, a major cause of this discrepancy is that the main collections of pedestrian images used to train the AI systems used in pedestrian detection feature more people with light skin than dark skin. The researchers hope that manufacturers will be more transparent when it comes to how their commercial pedestrian detection AI models are trained, as well as how they perform, before they drive on roads. “Current provision for fairness in these systems is limited, which can have a major impact not only on future systems, but directly on pedestrian safety.