Racial Discrimination in Facial Recognition is a Challenge - With Noonies Nominee Alesia Traichuk

Hey Hackers! I’m Alesia and I’m a Content Writer at Exadel, which is a software development company located in Walnut Creek, California.

First of all, a huge thank you to the HackerNoon community and staff for nominating me for a 2021 Noonies award for HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - rest API. Please do check out this award page and vote:

https://noonies.tech/award/2021-hackernoon-contributor-of-the-year-rest-api

As someone in the IT industry, I believe that facial recognition is the most exciting technology on the market because it makes our lives so much more convenient. Learn more about my thoughts and opinions on face recognition and my journey in the tech industry via the interview below.

1. What do you do and why do you do it? (tell us your story)

I’ve always been interested in stories. I believe that a story is the best way to express yourself and engage your audience. Diaries were my best silent friends and have been absorbing my writing for years. Later when I graduated from university, I got interested in technology and started making my way towards the IT industry. I wondered whether it was possible to combine tech and writing. And I found it! In a few months, I got my first job in a marketing department in a small software engineering company. The job was far from perfect but it helped me decide to narrow down my focus into content marketing. Later I became the next member of the content team at Exadel where a new chapter in my career path began to unfold.

2. Tell us more about the things you create / write / manage / build!

In our team, each member is responsible for specific types of work. My responsibility is to manage content for the AI department (we call it the AI Practice) and the QA department. For example, I communicate with our engineers to prepare and produce various kinds of articles, blog posts, social media posts, and webinars. As a rule, the interaction is built from interviews where I can use time efficiently and get comprehensive answers. Once the topic is well-researched and approved, I start creating a piece of content. This is fun since I get to tell stories in so many different formats. In our team, the amount of work is constantly increasing, but we do our best to structure everything appropriately and make our blog as useful as possible. Currently, I’m focusing on building a content marketing strategy for one of our successful face recognition solutions — CompreFace. We’ve already done a great job releasing a bunch of articles that explain how CompreFace can solve multiple business problems. You can check them out if you’re interested in this topic:

3. How did you end up on your current career path? Do you like it?

Definitely! I wouldn’t say that this is my final destination because there is a lot of stuff I’m interested in learning more about. However, my current career path is a natural and logical progression from its initial point to its current stage. I’m looking forward to seeing where I will be in a couple of years!

4. What tech are you most excited or passionate about right now and why?

Well, as I’ve mentioned before, my main passion right now is face recognition technology. Together with our tech experts, we continue to discover new ways to talk about face recognition and how it can improve business effectiveness. We’ve already released a lot of materials, but we are not going to stop. We are driven by the idea that face recognition can significantly help companies automate their business processes including attendance management, checking-in and out, and detecting unauthorized access on-premises.

5. What tech are you most worried about right now and why?

I think racial discrimination in face recognition technology is the top tech problem I’m worried about right now. We all know that modern face recognition tools can be extremely accurate but mostly if you’re a white guy. So the darker the skin, the more errors pop up. The study conducted by NIST is a great illustration of it. At our company, we’re trying to achieve the balance. We’ve already done a lot of research on this topic and trained the system appropriately. We’re constantly striving to improve our algorithms so that all people can easily use face recognition technology and our solutions in particular.

6. If we gave you 10 million dollars to invest in something today, what would you invest in and why?

I will definitely continue to do comprehensive research on the problem I mentioned above and involve as many data scientists and engineers as possible to make the best face recognition software in the world. I think now we’re still in the development stage, but with the help of necessary resources (financial and talent), we’ll be able to reach our goal.

7. What are you currently learning?

I always want to be learning something new because I get bored when I’m stuck in one place. Right now I’m learning the ropes of video production and photo editing because we are producing more and more content and exploring new types of content marketing. It looks like these skills will be necessary for my personal and professional development. I’m also studying literature on software development to better understand our tech talents and transform their answers into engaging content faster.

8. What’s the best advice you’ve ever given someone?

View challenges as opportunities. When facing a challenge, the majority of us see it as a negative experience and get upset. I believe that every challenge is a wonderful opportunity to question your skills, gain experience, and even use your nerves to bring you to the next level. It works both in personal and professional life.

9. What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

Probably ‘Whatever you do — do it 100%’. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing — cleaning the house or working on a new project. If you do your best, you will feel completely satisfied and won’t be sorry for not making enough effort. It definitely works for me.

About HackerNoon’s 2021 Noonie Awards

The annual Noonie Awards celebrate the best and brightest of the tech industry, bringing together all who are making the Internet and the world of tech what it is today. Please be sure to check out our award categories, nominate, and vote for the people and companies who you think are making the biggest impact on the tech industry today.

The 2021 Noonies are sponsored by: bybit, Dottech Domains, and Avast. Thank you so much to these sponsors who are helping us celebrate the accomplishments of all our nominees.