How Normal Am I?
The interactive documentary “How Normal Am I?”, developed by Sherpa’s artist Tijmen Schep, which has now been viewed over 700.000 times, allows viewers to learn about and experience the issues with face recognition technology. The website does all face recognition completely in the viewer’s own browser, so the project is 100% privacy friendly.
The documentary has recently won an .eu Web Award, where the jury described the work as thought provoking as well as technically impressive. The award was handed out in Toarmina, Sicily. A recording of theceremony can be seen here.
Unmasking AI, and finding statistics
Sherpa’s artist Tijmen Schep gave a talk at the Dutch Digital Day 2021, which was completely virtual this year, and shared some making-of details of “How Normal Am I?”. Specifically, the talk went into how unreliable the BMI prediction algorithm is, and what design decisions were made. Decisions which are usually hidden from view.
The question and answer session went into more depth on the relationship between AI and statistics. It endedwith a prediction: in the past we’ve said “there are lies, damn lies, and statistics”. In the future we might start to say “there are lies, damn lies, and AI”.
A recording of the event, including the question and answer session, can be viewed here.
