GOOGLE AND FACEBOOK NOW HAVE SOFTWARE THAT CAN TELL IF YOU ARE A POTENTIAL DEMOCRAT THAT CAN BE CONVERTED
A New AI Can Determine If A Person Is Gay Or Straight From A Facial
Photograph.
This Phenomenon Supports Both The Claims Made By Phrenology Decades Ago
By www.happehtheory.com
Artificial intelligence can accurately guess whether people are gay or
straight based on photos of their faces, according to new research
suggesting that machines can have significantly better “gaydar” than
humans.
The study from Stanford University – which found that a computer algorithm
could correctly distinguish between gay and straight men 81% of the time,
and 74% for women – has raised questions about the biological origins of
sexual orientation, the ethics of facial-detection technology and the
potential for this kind of software to violate people’s privacy or be
abused for anti-LGBT purposes.
The machine intelligence tested in the research, which was published in
the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and first reported in the
Economist, was based on a sample of more than 35,000 facial images that
men and women publicly posted on a US dating website. The researchers,
Michal Kosinski and Yilun Wang, extracted features from the images using
“deep neural networks”, meaning a sophisticated mathematical system that
learns to analyze visuals based on a large dataset.
The research found that gay men and women tended to have “gender-atypical”
features, expressions and “grooming styles”, essentially meaning gay men
appeared more feminine and vice versa. The data also identified certain
trends, including that gay men had narrower jaws, longer noses and larger
foreheads than straight men, and that gay women had larger jaws and
smaller foreheads compared to straight women.
Human judges performed much worse than the algorithm, accurately
identifying orientation only 61% of the time for men and 54% for women.
When the software reviewed five images per person, it was even more
successful – 91% of the time with men and 83% with women. Broadly, that
means “faces contain much more information about sexual orientation than
can be perceived and interpreted by the human brain”, the authors wrote.
The paper suggested that the findings provide “strong support” for the
theory that sexual orientation stems from exposure to certain hormones
before birth, meaning people are born gay and being queer is not a choice.
The machine’s lower success rate for women also could support the notion
that female sexual orientation is more fluid.
While the findings have clear limits when it comes to gender and sexuality
– people of color were not included in the study, and there was no
consideration of transgender or bisexual people – the implications for
artificial intelligence (AI) are vast and alarming. With billions of
facial images of people stored on social media sites and in government
databases, the researchers suggested that public data could be used to
detect people’s sexual orientation without their consent.
It’s easy to imagine spouses using the technology on partners they suspect
are closeted, or teenagers using the algorithm on themselves or their
peers. More frighteningly, governments that continue to prosecute LGBT
people could hypothetically use the technology to out and target
populations. That means building this kind of software and publicizing it
is itself controversial given concerns that it could encourage harmful
applications.
But the authors argued that the technology already exists, and its
capabilities are important to expose so that governments and companies can
proactively consider privacy risks and the need for safeguards and
regulations.
“It’s certainly unsettling. Like any new tool, if it gets into the wrong
hands, it can be used for ill purposes,” said Nick Rule, an associate
professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, who has published
research on the science of gaydar. “If you can start profiling people
based on their appearance, then identifying them and doing horrible things
to them, that’s really bad.”
Rule argued it was still important to develop and test this technology:
“What the authors have done here is to make a very bold statement about
how powerful this can be. … Now we know that we need protections.”
Kosinski was not available for an interview, according to a Stanford
spokesperson. The professor is known for his work with Cambridge
University on psychometric profiling, including using Facebook data to
make conclusions about personality. Donald Trump’s campaign and Brexit
supporters deployed similar tools to target voters, raising concerns about
the expanding use of personal data in elections.
In the Stanford study, the authors also noted that artificial intelligence
could be used to explore links between facial features and a range of
other phenomena, such as political views, psychological conditions or
personality.
This type of research further raises concerns about the potential for
scenarios like the science-fiction movie Minority Report, in which people
can be arrested based solely on the prediction that they will commit a
crime.
“AI can tell you anything about anyone with enough data,” said Brian
Brackeen, CEO of Kairos, a face recognition company. “The question is as a
society, do we want to know?”
Brackeen, who said the Stanford data on sexual orientation was
“startlingly correct”, said there needs to be an increased focus on
privacy and tools to prevent the misuse of machine learning as it becomes
more widespread and advanced.
Rule speculated about AI being used to actively discriminate against
people based on a machine’s interpretation of their faces: “We should all
be collectively concerned.”