Live data from Hacker News

Facial recognition can predict person’s political orientation with 72% accuracy

nature.com

111–120 of 421 posts

Re: Facial recognition can predict person’s political orientation with 72% accuracy

#111

So, unless I read the abstract wrong, this is identifying age, race, and gender, then making categorical qualifiers based on those distinctions. While using ML to do the facial recognition to distinguish a person's age, race and gender is neat - categorizing their political affiliation with a 72% accuracy rate is fairly nominal, given the tools used by modern parties to garner donations and directed online advertisin…

Does anyone know what the accuracy of a prediction is if you use only those three factors -- age, race, and gender?

Re: Facial recognition can predict person’s political orientation with 72% accuracy

#112
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They tested this question specifically: > Both in real life and in our sample, the classification of political orientation is to some extent enabled by demographic traits clearly displayed on participants’ faces. For example ... white people, older people, and males are more likely to be conservatives. What would an algorithm’s accuracy be when distinguishing between faces of people of the same age, gender, and ethni…

From there, it would seem that cues might come from how 'kempt' they appear, whether the head shot was from a party or for a resume, perhaps color and style of clothing, ... I.e., maybe not strictly the face.

[deleted]

Re: Facial recognition can predict person’s political orientation with 72% accuracy

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

>Downvote me again if you want no problem, any time HN guidelines: "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading." I agree, and I vote accordingly.

you think its a joke?

Re: Facial recognition can predict person’s political orientation with 72% accuracy

#115

"The dating website sample was provided by a popular dating website in 2017. It contains profile images uploaded by 977,777 users; their location (country); and self-reported political orientation, gender, and age." It doesn't sound like people were consenting/aware that they'll endup on a facial recognition study. But I'm not even surprised dating website would sell their such data

[deleted]

Re: Facial recognition can predict person’s political orientation with 72% accuracy

#117
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"VGGFace224 was used to convert facial images into face descriptors, or 2,048-value-long vectors subsuming their core features." So they had more than age, race, and gender, but it doesn't really say how things were weighted.

I don't really buy this study. If humans can't get a better accuracy than 55%, I'm convinced this vector is leaking some obvious (maybe high-frequency) information that doesn't have anything to do with the face. E.g location of the person.

I hope you're right, otherwise we're in for some kind of AI phrenology nightmare in the not too distant future.

Re: Facial recognition can predict person’s political orientation with 72% accuracy

#118
post #50

So, unless I read the abstract wrong, this is identifying age, race, and gender, then making categorical qualifiers based on those distinctions. While using ML to do the facial recognition to distinguish a person's age, race and gender is neat - categorizing their political affiliation with a 72% accuracy rate is fairly nominal, given the tools used by modern parties to garner donations and directed online advertisin…

They tested this question specifically: > Both in real life and in our sample, the classification of political orientation is to some extent enabled by demographic traits clearly displayed on participants’ faces. For example ... white people, older people, and males are more likely to be conservatives. What would an algorithm’s accuracy be when distinguishing between faces of people of the same age, gender, and ethni…

If the total population sampling is the same, I would expect the accuracies to remain the same. E.g. if I can get 72% accuracy in the total population just by looking at age/race/gender, doesn’t that exactly mean the accuracies in each individual category are on average 72%?

Re: Facial recognition can predict person’s political orientation with 72% accuracy

#119

[flagged]

[flagged]

The lessons will lose their potency not because of comparisons like these but because most people don't particularly care about history and don't want to expend the effort of knowing history as opposed to other things they could be doing.

Usually, mentioning Nazism doesn't work well due to the way it invites flame-wars, to the point where Godwin's Law is well known. However, the specific irony they mentioned is in fact a valid observation: pseudoscience used by the state with grave consequences. I am saying this even though I myself have a strong pro-Israel bias.

Asimov mentioned this idea in a discussion with Elie Wiesel with reference to the treatment of the Edomites as described in scripture. It's an argument that has more to do with exploring the nature of political power itself than to demonize a specific group. It just so happens that in this case we have a group that has experienced one of the most poignant extremes of this phenomenon, hence why it comes up often.

Is the spotlight often placed repeatedly and with unfair frequency on Israel? I personally think it is. But that doesn't close off the topic on its own.

Re: Facial recognition can predict person’s political orientation with 72% accuracy

#120

[flagged]

[flagged]

I agree that Hitler was evil on a scale unlike any other. I also think comparisons should be carefully thought out and not tossed out carelessly. I do disagree with the notion that we should never compare to Hitler and the Nazis. To completely refrain makes them a one off, and treats them as if that could never happen again. I think the tools available to dictators today make the rise of someone or something like that more likely. So I think it is very important that we guard against that, and look carefully at the lessons of history. Again emphasizing we should be careful and not make comparisons callously.
Post reply on HN