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

#21

Post by stanrivers » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 4:17 PM UTC

So... now, is it because people that came from the same regions a long time ago all happened to tend towards a certain political leaning and that just has stayed within families for that long?! Like a culture thing, but within families?

In general, though, its amazing how little control we have over who we are despite the feeling that we are in control of it.

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

#22

Post by MattGaiser » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 4:17 PM UTC

I want a facial recognition tool that tells me what information I am leaking. We need a haveibeenpwned for facial recognition.

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

#23

Post by mmaunder » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 4:18 PM UTC

endisneigh wrote: post #6

What's a useful application of this, other than more advertising?

Understanding why it is predictable and using that to either exclude ossified groups from targeted campaigns to save resources or focusing on them more tightly if they’re swing.

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

#24

Post by zwieback » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 4:18 PM UTC

The article discusses the underlying correlations at work but I think the title is a bit sensationalistic. Would expect more from Nature.

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

#25

Post by UnpossibleJim » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 4:18 PM UTC

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 advertising - no offense.

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

#26

Post by Pfhreak » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 4:18 PM UTC

dilawar wrote: post #10

May be the world polarising into two kind of extreme polarisization: one with a sense of humor and one without it. And it has a noticeable effect on the face. I'd love to see few samples of faces from each class.

I'm incredibly curious which political group has a sense of humor in your mind. Because I'm going to guess most folks would say, "my political group".

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

#27

Post by tryonenow » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 4:18 PM UTC

imwillofficial wrote: post #2

I find this fascinating, with no intention to start a political battle, how might somebody’s biology influence their political leanings?

I'd posit that it's some combination of genetic controls on things like openness, conscientiousness, threat processing, and the fact that people have children who look like them and on average live in groups who look somewhat similar.

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

#28

Post by ebegnwgnen » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 4:18 PM UTC

"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

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

#29

Post by stanrivers » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 4:18 PM UTC

kicat wrote: post #18

I only skimmed the paper, so I'm not claiming to know much about it, but one thing to keep in mind here is that a fair coin has a 50% accuracy using the same terminology as the headline. I'm not saying 72% is not an interesting achievement, its just that "you can do about 50% better than random chance" describes my gut feeling about how much you could actually see in someones face.

This is an important point - 72% is interesting, but its a 22% added to the chance to guess correctly... still interesting though

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

#30

Post by imwillofficial » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 4:19 PM UTC

dogsgobork wrote: post #11

zapdrive wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skin color. Features resulting from inbreeding. Features due to your gender. Features resulting from gender change.

Inbreeding?

Yeah, it’s not a whole sentence so I’m having difficulty grasping the meaning.