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

#181

Post by retrac » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 6:04 PM UTC

utborin wrote: post #138

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 classifi…

I suspect we're going to see the same thing we saw in the model that can detect sexual orientation with much better than chance odds. It was, apparently, detecting that gay men tend to take or select images of themselves for a dating profile using a different angle, better lighting, and possibly differences in things like hairstyle and beards.

Very anecdotally, I've noticed a possible weak correlation between certain kinds of beard styles and political leanings in men.

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

#182

Post by jfk13 » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 6:05 PM UTC

aboringusername wrote: post #46

I assume there's no way to actually verify how someone may choose to vote, assuming there's no record of that? I think there's huge value now that everything is being sent into a "machine" or "the algorithm" in fucking with it. Order sex toys from Amazon, show them you're into outrageous books and fool them into creating a fake profile of "you", based on your spending, browsing and other data you generate. I'd love t…

> I'm too old to vote now

There are places with a maximum voting age?

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

#183

Post by htkyoholk » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 6:05 PM UTC

ebegnwgnen wrote: post #28

"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

Did it control for sun exposure? Working outside in the sun versus working inside in city buildings.

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

#184

Post by SamBam » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 6:06 PM UTC

fcantournet wrote: post #168

utborin wrote: post #138

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 classifi…

So even filtering for the extremely limited number of things that you allow us to find problematic, by their own admission : - they know that it's actually probably "working" (lol 72%) because of other biases they didn't take into account - Ultimately it puts people into 2 bins which are both huge and disparate and reduce complexe multi-dimensional elements to a meaningless binary. cool cool cool.

I don't really understand this comment. You don't think it's surprising or interesting that it could predict with 70% accuracy the political orientation of two different older white males? Or two younger non-white females?

I found this to be a surprising result.

What the mechanism? Is it the haircut? The facial expression? The quality of the photo? Maybe. Do those count as "biases that they don't take into account?" Could be. Would it be interesting to learn what those "biases" are? Yes!

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

#185

Post by gzer0 » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 6:06 PM UTC

fcantournet wrote: post #168

utborin wrote: post #138

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 classifi…

So even filtering for the extremely limited number of things that you allow us to find problematic, by their own admission : - they know that it's actually probably "working" (lol 72%) because of other biases they didn't take into account - Ultimately it puts people into 2 bins which are both huge and disparate and reduce complexe multi-dimensional elements to a meaningless binary. cool cool cool.

This is statistically significant. The implications are massive. The authors are signalling it might be worthwhile to take a look at the exponential growth of these technologies.

72% is much better than:

* random chance (50%)

* human accuracy (55%)

* 100-item personality questionnaire (66%)

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

#186

Post by MikeHolman » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 6:07 PM UTC

mywittyname wrote: post #170

utborin wrote: post #138

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 classifi…

There's evidence of inheritability of political orientation, since it is tied to personality traits. Given that, it makes sense that it is possible to predict political orientation through looks alone. After all, looks are also inherited traits. The article gets into this a little bit. They are able to predict traits like intelligence and honesty by looks alone.

I think this is a very dangerous line of study. I can easily see these results getting used to forward racism and other appearance based discrimination.

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

#187

Post by cambalache » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 6:08 PM UTC

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…

> This system is picking up on things we don't notice.

In the case of men at least some studies have found a correlation between testosterone level and political orientation, something that matches well with my anecdotal observations. It is not outlandish to think this manifests in visual cues in even something as limited as a pic.

https://www.mdcthereporter.com/low-testosterone-left/

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

#188

Post by Leherenn » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 6:09 PM UTC

rsynnott wrote: post #131

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…

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.

But wouldn't this be a reasonable feature used by the classifier to reach its conclusion? They can't control for everything, it would become meaningless.

I think the questions about age/sex/ethnicity are sensible in that it's a valid question to ask whether it's just doing the naive/obvious thing or something more. But if you keep on removing the less obvious things then of course you'll reach a point where it's no better than a coin flip because it's basically comparing blank pictures.

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

#189

Post by SamBam » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 6:09 PM UTC

retrac wrote: post #181

utborin wrote: post #138

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 classifi…

I suspect we're going to see the same thing we saw in the model that can detect sexual orientation with much better than chance odds. It was, apparently, detecting that gay men tend to take or select images of themselves for a dating profile using a different angle, better lighting, and possibly differences in things like hairstyle and beards. Very anecdotally, I've noticed a possible weak correlation between certain…

Obviously it's looking at something. I feel like everyone is jumping to assuming the authors are implying it's somehow in the person's facial structure, but it doesn't say that.

If it's looking at the quality of the photo, or the trim of the beard, that's still interesting. Among other things, it means that you know analyses like this might start cropping up everywhere you submit your photo (job application cover letter?), and also that humans might be doing this innately with photos and not even realizing it.

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

#190

Post by derekam » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 6:10 PM UTC

karpierz wrote: post #34

This isn't a study that shows that people's faces indicate their political leanings. It's a study which shows that pictures that people select to represent themselves publicly have features that indicate political leaning.

Exactly. There was some fuss a while back about a similar classifier for sexuality. It turned out to be guessing mostly based on head tilt, personal hygiene and whether the person was wearing glasses. The physiognomy component was ~nonexistent even though it was publicized as though it weren’t. People intentionally if at times subconsciously present themselves in a way that signals information to kindred spirits. You’d need to bring in hundreds of people, wash them and basically take mugshots to control for that.