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

nature.com

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

#141

Post by sillysaurusx »

mabbo wrote: post #90

I think the key line is how much better this system is than humans attempting the same task: > Political orientation was correctly classified in 72% of liberal–conservative face pairs, remarkably better than chance (50%), human accuracy (55%), or one afforded by a 100-item personality questionnaire (66%). This isn't a matter of "recognize that old white people are conservative", because people will do that already, a…

But damn it's neat and maybe frightening. Imagine if your next hiring manager had a quiet little camera in the corner and chose you based on your predicted approval of unions.

This is the dystopian vision of the future I come to HN for. Bravo!

(It's also why I do ML, since I'll be on the front lines to notice if something like that is being deployed. Or at least somewhat more likely.)

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

#143

Post by boomboomsubban »

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?

You can basically determine this by looking at voter/exit poll results, and any single criteria would give ~55% at best.

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

#144

Post by mabbo »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #141
mabbo wrote: post #90

I think the key line is how much better this system is than humans attempting the same task: > Political orientation was correctly classified in 72% of liberal–conservative face pairs, remarkably better than chance (50%), human accuracy (55%), or one afforded by a 100-item personality questionnaire (66%). This isn't a matter of "recognize that old white people are conservative", because people will do that already, a…

But damn it's neat and maybe frightening. Imagine if your next hiring manager had a quiet little camera in the corner and chose you based on your predicted approval of unions. This is the dystopian vision of the future I come to HN for. Bravo! (It's also why I do ML, since I'll be on the front lines to notice if something like that is being deployed. Or at least somewhat more likely.)

> This is the dystopian vision of the future I come to HN for

It's what I'm here for. Fascinating technology- how might I ruin the world with it?

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

#145

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

NyxWulf wrote: post #120
marshmallow_12 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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 tha…

> I agree that Hitler was evil on a scale unlike any other.

I feel it is a great danger to think in this way. If you disregard the others[0], you may overlook certain important aspects of these evil people - especially the factors that allowed them to gain popularity, to rise to power, and to actually execute their cruel plans. Focusing just on Hitler is myopic.

https://fee.org/articles/who-was-the-biggest-mass-murderer-i...

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

#146

Post by sillysaurusx »

ebegnwgnen wrote: post #86
MattGaiser wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of scraped dating website datasets lying around.

Yes, but I suppose you can't use them in a publication on Nature if they are scrapped illegally. This dataset directly from the dating website

Ha. Hahaha. I wish. I'm sorry to laugh, but a ton of ML papers are based on illegally-scraped datasets of one form or another, unless they use strictly blessed datasets (Imagenet2012 being the gold standard mostly-useless-in-the-real-world dataset).

OpenAI's Jukebox is based on illegal large-scale gathering of copyrighted material, for example.

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

#147

Post by michaelmrose »

marshmallow_12 wrote: post #96
ebegnwgnen wrote: post #83

[flagged]

[flagged]

Unfortunately the evils perpetrated by Hitler have many parallels. The human race has committed many acts of evil and extermination often along genetic lines. We owe the few victims who are still alive almost 80 years later our sympathy and our commitment to prevent future evil but we do not owe them our silence. These events are like it or not part of our common historical context.

I absolutely would accuse someone of color of imitating a slave,r if the shoe fits wear it. I have never been afraid to step on toes and I don't think society should fear to give offense if it gets in the way of honest discussion. Contrary to your assertion I think discussion keeps the events of the holocaust top of mind and relevant. Too many already deny it even happened.

Also complaints about getting downvoted attract downvotes.

On the primary topic of discussion do be aware that a Israeli terrorist detector might misidentify both Jewish people and Palestinians but who do you think would be subject to additional scrutiny or mistreatment? Such tools run the risk of attaching seemingly scientific justifications to our pre existing prejudices.

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

#149

Post by Defenestresque »

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?

This is the exact question I came to the comments to find.

The abstract states:

>Accuracy remained high (69%) even when controlling for age, gender, and ethnicity.

To give some context, chance is 50%, human guess is 55% and a 100-question questionnaire is 66%.

Personally, I am surprised that the accuracy remained that high when controlling for the three variables I would have considered most telling in the determination (age, gender and race).

I'd be very curious to know what exactly the algorithm is determining from the face photos outside of those obvious variables. I know with a ML algorithm it's practically impossible to determine why the classification was made, but does anyone human here have any thoughts?

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

#150

Post by pwinnski »

marshmallow_12 wrote: post #96
ebegnwgnen wrote: post #83

[flagged]

[flagged]

Declaring a group or philosophy "off limits," and to say it "has no parallel," seems certain to eventually invite just such a parallel. Hitler didn't wake up one day, speak an incantation that resulted in possession by an eldritch creature of unimaginable evil, and then carry out plans for dehumanizing world domination. Dehumanizing the other, authoritarian fascism, and expansive conquest are common themes in human history, and what sets that era and group apart is more the confluence of all of those things with the time that technology made more horrific things possible than previous such events, and more easily documented than previous such events. Even in that era, Hitler wasn't alone among the Axis power to engage in barbaric atrocities, which only focusing on Japanese prison camps in mainland China makes clear.

So no, absolutely not, those subject should never be off-limits. Already your desire to mythologize the holocaust may have caused you to overlook what was happening halfway around the globe. Certainly treating the holocaust as a special case that could never be repeated seems guaranteed to cause people to miss warning signs as those same principles rise in popularity again, as history shows they have and do and will.

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