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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

#291

Post by [deleted] »

marstall wrote: post #267
fc373745 wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> images were tightly cropped around the face and resized to 224 × 224 pixels

still leaves the micro- and macro-expressions, small grooming cues (makeup, no makeup, eyebrows trimmed or not), hairline, head angle vs. camera, lighting etc. These are all things that humans very specifically deploy to define themselves and their grouping, and communicate with others. So I am guessing a whole universe of personal yes-no qualities, political and otherwise, are encoded there, quite intentionally.

[deleted]

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

#292

Post by NoOneNew »

Oh cool, are we going to bring back phrenology as long as its an AI powered black box. Sounds wonderful. It's going to be impossible for any of this to be abused. I say we should give AI power to a select few people who can make sweeping decisions in everyone's life. Oo Oo can we bring back eugenics too? What's wrong with an AI powered method of selecting the best genes to continue the human race. Then we can sterilize the degenerates the almighty algorithm picks out.

I swear to fuck. All this praise to repeat the sins of the 20th century all over again? But oh no, it's okay because it's done by "software engineers".

That and you "atheists techies" are just as fanatically religious as jihadists. Instead of a deity, you worship silicon valley and algorithms.

Of course tech companies can be trusted with our data.

Theres nothing to fear from putting your life on social media if you have nothing to hide.

A select few should have absolute say on what we are allowed to even consider "free speech".

Tech companies aren't in it for profit, they're in it to save the world because they're the "educated elite".

Just... why is this not being shot down? Are you that blind to where it's going to lead? Its literally the same steps every other totialirian psychopath took. Mass identification on bullshit pseudoscience. Then comes the extermination.

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

#293

Post by cwkoss »

Evil plan: release this model as an app, heavily branded to skew usage towards my political enemies, and suggest it to be used to find " infiltrators in your midst".

Accuracy issues are a feature not a bug! Now you've sown a bunch of discontent and suspicion within their communities.

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

#294

Post by bhk »

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…

The 72% number is the result when not controlling for demographics. When controlling for demographics, the results ranged from 65% to 71% accuracy.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-79310-1/figures/2

It makes we wonder what the accuracy would be if they controlled for demographics at a smaller granularity, like sub-ethnicities.

Furthermore, it appears that the Canadian dating site data set was 54% conservative, so an algorithm that always guessed conservative would be correct 54% of the time. From the article I can't tell what the balance was for the other data sets.

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

#295

Post by imwillofficial »

Pfhreak wrote: post #202
imwillofficial wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you read my mind?!? ::Looks at you with suspicion:: In all seriousness, I haven’t followed closely, so I don’t know who hates Dr. Seuss lately, they are the baddies.

I think it's yet another situation where everyone is escalating hard from "hey, there are some stereotypes in this particular media that are problematic when presented uncritically". That initial idea somehow turns into, "The left hates Dr. Seuss" and wild slippery slopes about book burning.

The left is literally pushing for the banning of a childhood classic with no racial problems. No slippery slope needed.

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

#296

Post by drno123 »

cambalache wrote: post #187
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/

I have no idea why this comment got downvoted. This is the most scientific explanation possible. In males, more testosterone induces more risk taking, while low testosterone is linked to risk avoidance. Left-wing policies (“nanny state”) cater to people who avoid risks; people who are risk takers prefer right wing policies. Testosterone also affects muscle growth and facial characteristics.

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

#297

Post by imwillofficial »

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #236
bluefirebrand wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Differences among people do not make them more United and their bonds stronger. Literally the opposite is true I tend to agree. It's why I find all of the recent "Diversity is our strength" stuff so puzzling. I'm not against diversity, I just recognize that it generally results in at least some interpersonal challenges to overcome, not necessarily unity.

Sic transit "E pluribus unum"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_pluribus_unum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melting_pot

And as America becomes more different from one person to the next, how is that whole “melting pot” idea working?

Multiculturalism is dead.

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

#299

Post by crazygringo »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #288
crazygringo wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a bell curve on each issue independently. This has been well established by surveys. And therefore however you want to aggregate issues into an axis, you'll invariably find the political distribution to be normal. It doesn't have anything to do with how coherent or not you find each party's platform to be. So yes, it is fair to say that political views are bell curve-shaped. It's not an artifact of political…

> There's a bell curve on each issue independently. This has been well established by surveys. I'd be curious to see the data. Measuring agreement is challenging. (Strongly Agree versus Agree mean different things to different people.) And polarizing issues tend to be multi-modal, thereby defying normal characterization. Where one can create an objective x-axis, e.g. with increasing strength of regulation on a topic,…

The political scientist Morris Fiorina is who you want to start with. His book "Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America" provides a great overview with lots of data.

A central finding is precisely that people appear polarized when you measure badly, but when you really delve into their nuanced beliefs with better surveys and more accurate questions, the bell curve is apparent everywhere and polarization disappears.

And I don't know where one sees non-normal preference patterns. Regulation is a great example -- very few people believe in zero regulation, and very few in extreme regulation. People overwhelmingly prefer a moderate amount. Of course, whatever the objective measurement is, you may need a logarithmic scale or something else for it to show up as truly Gaussian -- as well as not limiting the range of responses. But on any modern issue of society-wide disagreement, one virtually always finds it to have a single central peak (as opposed to two peaks or more, or increasing/decreasing monotonically).

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

#300

Post by csomar »

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 should be impressive considering that humans are very good at picking other human faces.
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