Facial recognition can predict person’s political orientation with 72% accuracy • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by rsynnott » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 5:28 PM UTC

hirundo wrote: post #50

UnpossibleJim wrote: post #25

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…

I suspect there are a lot of less obvious things they'd need to control for. Off the top of my head, weight would be an obvious one; in developed countries urban areas (particularly large urban areas) generally have a lower average BMI than rural and suburban areas, and there's also typically a major political difference between rural and urban areas.

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

#132

Post by dvfjsdhgfv » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 5:29 PM UTC

marshmallow_12 wrote: post #96

ebegnwgnen wrote: post #83

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> Casual comparisons like yours means that the lessons learnt from the holocaust will lose their power and ultimately be forgotten.

While I agree with the message of your comment (i.e. the critique of everybody using the word Nazi for everything they don't like), I feel you make another mistake here by - probably unconsciously - reducing Hitler's misdeed to the Holocaust. This is very upsetting to huge populations of non-Jewish people who lost many members of their families during WW2. Especially to Russians - they lost 27M as opposed to 6M Jews. I don't want to compare the horror of both numbers in any way, just want to mention this because I notice more and more many people seem to reduce the evil of WW2 to the Holocaust.

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

#133

Post by mellavora » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 5:30 PM UTC

tomrod wrote: post #121

tweetle_beetle wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

We're pretty much there today.

except for the phrenology part :)

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

#134

Post by mattnewton » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 5:30 PM UTC

kevinventullo wrote: post #118

hirundo wrote: 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…

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%?

Not necessarily because each age/race/gender tuple can be present in the test dataset different amounts, and either be a stronger or weaker indicator to the model.

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

#135

Post by sillysaurusx » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 5:31 PM UTC

quasirandom wrote: post #125

ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When I read a paper like this I'm looking for four things: (1) the data, (2) the benchmarks, (3) the architecture, (4) the controls/ablation. 1. The data: "We used a sample of 1,085,795 participants from three countries (the U.S., the UK, and Canada; see Table 1) and their self-reported political orientation, age, and gender. Their facial images (one per person) were obtained from their profiles on Facebook or a popu…

Geography and income are two powerful conditioners. These can leak in so many ways: uncropped background (geography), image color and quality (income), eyeglass shape (geography and income). This study really needs more controls. Geography and income would be a nice start.

But then the data wouldn't represent the natural world: nature as it is.

Raw data is the correct thing to use, because it's what a hypothetical other person would also use if you ran the same experiment yourself.

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

#136

Post by gamegoblin » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 5:32 PM UTC

karaterobot wrote: post #111

UnpossibleJim wrote: post #25

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?

All numbers are Biden-Trump in 2020:

People under 30: 60-36.

White men: 38-61

Black women: 90-9

So there are definitely some strong predictors there.

Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/2016-2020-electoral-maps-exi...

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

#137

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 5:32 PM UTC

sillysaurusx wrote: post #135

quasirandom wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I read a paper like this I'm looking for four things: (1) the data, (2) the benchmarks, (3) the architecture, (4) the controls/ablation. 1. The data: "We used a sample of 1,085,795 participants from three countries (the U.S., the UK, and Canada; see Table 1) and their self-reported political orientation, age, and gender. Their facial images (one per person) were obtained from their profiles on Facebook or a popu…

Geography and income are two powerful conditioners. These can leak in so many ways: uncropped background (geography), image color and quality (income), eyeglass shape (geography and income). This study really needs more controls. Geography and income would be a nice start. But then the data wouldn't represent the natural world: nature as it is. Raw data is the correct thing to use, because it's what a hypothetical ot…

[deleted]

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

#138

Post by utborin » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 5:33 PM UTC

There's an avalanche of people commenting on this who didn't bother to check the article before raising their methodological objections, so let's get these out of the way here.

- Yes, they controlled for objects appearing in the pictures that might indicate political affiliation. The images are tightly cropped around the face. See Methods.

- Yes, this is significantly better than both a coin flip and a human classifier. They gave the same test to humans, who did much worse than the model. See Abstract, Introduction, and Results.

- Yes, this is doing more than just detecting a person's race, age, and/or gender. The classifier is still accurate when they compare people with the same race, age, and gender. See Results.

If you want to discuss actual limitations in the study, here are some the author points out:

- "A more detailed picture could be obtained by exploring the links between political orientation and facial features extracted from images taken in a standardized setting while controlling for facial hair, grooming, facial expression, and head orientation."

- "Another factor affecting classification accuracy is the quality of the political orientation estimates. While the dichotomous representation used here (i.e., conservative vs. liberal) is widely used in the literature, it offers only a crude estimate of the complex interpersonal differences in ideology. Moreover, self-reported political labels suffer from the reference group effect: respondents’ tendency to assess their traits in the context of the salient comparison group."

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

#139

Post by rsynnott » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 5:33 PM UTC

umvi wrote: post #36

Surprising, yet not surprising. As the article mentions: > 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, as evidenced in literature and Table 1, in the U.S., white people, older people, and males are more likely to be conservatives. Most people can predict a person's political orie…

> I was under the impression that "liberal" and "conservative" had different meanings in UK vs. USA so how could it do this?

I assume they're using the US definition (meaning "left wing" and "right wing", more or less).

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

#140

Post by klmadfejno » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 5:34 PM UTC

marshmallow_12 wrote: post #96

ebegnwgnen wrote: post #83

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[flagged]

> The evils Hitler inflicted has no parallel.

The evils Hitler inflicted has plenty of parallels. It doesn't diminish how bad it was to acknowledge that there have been plenty of horrible people throughout history. Post WWII PR efforts made Hitler a cultural icon of evil. Let's not mince words. He was maximally evil by any relevant framework. But putting him on a different plane of moral existence is a disservice to those suffering from the evil of other, non-hitler, evil people.