Dr. Lizette Spangenberg | When AI Can't See You

Some of the most damaging AI failures aren't caused by bad actors or broken systems. They happen when a system works exactly as it was designed to.In this talk, Dr Lizette Spangenberg unpacks what Eric Meyer called inadvertent algorithmic cruelty, the harm that surfaces when an algorithm does its job perfectly and nobody stopped to ask who it might hurt.Drawing on examples from Spotify Wrapped, Facebook's Year in Review, targeted advertising and healthcare AI, she shows how harm enters at three different layers of a product, data, logic and interface, and why UX teams usually only get involved at the last one.She then walks through a real case study: a face-scan health app that simply could not detect a colleague's face because of her skin tone. And she asks whether a disclaimer at the bottom of the screen is ever good enough.Whether you're a designer, researcher, product owner or BA, you'll leave with a sharper set of questions for evaluating any AI product: who does this work worst for, what happens when it's wrong, and what are we optimising for, at whose expense.Chapters00:00 Unpacking the Title00:43 Algorithms, AI and Machine Learning04:04 Spotify Wrapped and the Pink Pilates Princess07:25 Targeted Ads After a Breakup08:43 When Your Photos App Remembers Too Much09:59 Year in Review and "Algorithmic Cruelty"12:24 They All Worked Exactly as Intended13:30 Where Harm Enters: Data, Logic, Interface14:46 The UX Gap in AI Projects15:23 Three Questions Every Team Should Ask17:07 The Black Mirror Test17:55 Case Study: Face Scan Health Apps20:08 When the System Can't See Your Face22:28 Are Disclaimers Good Enough?24:07 Accuracy vs Equity25:17 What Designers Are Responsible For27:09 The Ring Ad: When AI Sees Too Much28:57 Q&A: Where Does Responsibility Lie?31:48 Q&A: Is Anyone Getting Guardrails Right?34:15 Q&A: Biased Data and the Human GuardrailResourcesDr. Lizette Spangenberg on LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/lizette-spangenberg/X, bigly labshttps://dischemgroup.com/xbigly/UX South Africahttps://uxsouthafrica.com/UXSA Online Eventshttps://uxsouthafrica.com/events/uxsa-2026-july-onlineSubscribe for more talks from UX South Africa featuring leading voices in UX, product design, research, service design and AI.