BiasMedium
Remote Proctoring Facial-Detection Software Reportedly Failed to Detect Black Student During Lab Quiz
- Occurred
- Feb 1, 2021
- Published
- Feb 7, 2022
- Source
- AI Incident Database
Summary
In February 2021, a Black college student, Amaya Ross, reportedly tried to take a remote biology lab quiz using proctoring software that could not detect her face. Ross said she spent 45 minutes changing lights, shades, position, and background before pointing an LED flashlight at her face so the app would work; the quiz itself was only 30 minutes.
Developers
- Remote proctoring software developers
Deployers
- Unnamed Ohio college
Harmed parties
- University students
- Universities
- Students
- Educational communities
- Black test-takers
- Black students
- Amaya Ross
Classification
Category confidence: 95%
Severity confidence: 90%
Rationale: Facial recognition failure disproportionately affected a Black student, indicating algorithmic bias in remote learning software.
Classifier: Qwen/Qwen3.5-35B-A3B-FP8