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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

#241

Post by invalidusernam3 »

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

It's likely that users did consent when they checked the "I've read the terms and conditions" checkbox when signing up.

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

#242

Post by jbob2000 »

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.

Profile photo with a person wearing a baseball cap and Oakleys? Yup, that’s a republican.

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

#243

Post by cmehdy »

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…

What makes you think your hiring manager isn't already doing that based on their interaction with you and your looks? Even simply subconsciously?

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

#244

Post by quasirandom »

marklubi wrote: post #235
SiempreViernes wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, the headline claim is about faces , how does it make sense to then insist that you must leave the background in?

This reminds me of an early ML study about detecting skin cancer from pictures with a high accuracy rate. The problem was, that with the ML, they ended up building a ruler classifier, because most of the pictures with skin cancer happened to also have a ruler in them to measure the size.

Or the commercial model that identifies criminals from their photograph. Turns out people who frown are criminals. People who smile aren't. Or so you'd believe if you anchored your expectations comparing mug shots to social media profile pictures.

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

#245

Post by alcover »

laurent92 wrote: post #212
alcover wrote: post #196

How would we collectively react if ML proves accurate in classifying anti-social traits or worse ? Mythomania, narcissic perversion, pedofilia, etc ? Employers, condos, schools, many communities will want to ML-screen candidates, be it officially or not..

We already do it, at least subconsciously. We’ve also developed a side of society who actively tries to counter it, by actively seeking out-of-the-normative profiles: The skater look in companies is now a thing that helps you get sympathy, being female opens up sone avenues, Atlassian’s CEO wearing a mohawk or Jack Dorsey’s looks are all symbols of a society which started searching for non-normative people. Perhaps w…

OK but attributes like the mohawk are 'playful' in this setting. It distinguishes its bearer by making him look aggressive while still being a good, collaborative member.

On the opposite, ML could indicate that in spite of one's hippy looks he really is a potential ruthless monster.

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

#246

Post by 542354234235 »

klmadfejno wrote: post #161
wycy wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How does one calculate a metric like that?

Simplistically, let’s take the above statistic “A randomly chosen black individual in the united states has a 72% chance of leaning democrat” at face value. So, a coin flip would be lower than 50-50 because someone of that race in that country does not have a 50 50 chance. So you would adjust the chance to 72-28 and compare that to the Facial recognition results. If you find that the results are the same, then you know that the Facial Recognition not picking up on anything beyond race. If the results are different, you know the FR is picking up on something in addition to race.

Really it is more complex than that, but fundamentally you try to say “how accurate can we be using just age, gender, and ethnicity” and use that as your controlled benchmark.

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

#247

Post by hntrader »

SamBam wrote: post #189
retrac wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 le…

Humans might try, but the same study says they're not good at it with only 55 percent accuracy.

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

#248

Post by 542354234235 »

rsynnott wrote: post #198
jfk13 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm too old to vote now There are places with a maximum voting age?

Presumably they're a cardinal. Cardinals aged over 80 aren't allowed vote for pope.

This is the only reasonable explanation.

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

#249

Post by rednerrus »

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…

People are desperately trying to tell you who they are with everything that they do.

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

#250

Post by hntrader »

jbob2000 wrote: post #242
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.

Profile photo with a person wearing a baseball cap and Oakleys? Yup, that’s a republican.

If it's that easy then why was human guessing only 55 percent accurate?
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