The dataset contains images of children’s faces downloaded from websites about autism, which sparked concerns at Springer Nature about consent and reliability.
While I agree that especially in this moment this is a terrible idea, and the collection process is idiotic and reprehensible, in a better society it might be helpful if it were actually a successful tool. Autism is a spectrum and a somewhat vague collection of behavioral traits and plenty of children grow up without a diagnosis causing lots of undue pain and stress. Plenty of them may learn to mask on their own, but imho it would be great to be able to catch it early and give them tools that might help them succeed and give their family more understanding of them as individuals. Again, I don’t think this is a good idea, but I can see how a well meaning person might have come up with this.
While I agree that especially in this moment this is a terrible idea, and the collection process is idiotic and reprehensible, in a better society it might be helpful if it were actually a successful tool. Autism is a spectrum and a somewhat vague collection of behavioral traits and plenty of children grow up without a diagnosis causing lots of undue pain and stress. Plenty of them may learn to mask on their own, but imho it would be great to be able to catch it early and give them tools that might help them succeed and give their family more understanding of them as individuals. Again, I don’t think this is a good idea, but I can see how a well meaning person might have come up with this.