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

#391

Post by colonelcanoe » Sat, Mar 06, 2021, 4:02 AM UTC

timkam wrote: post #313

hntrader wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"controlling for ... ethnicity" There's significant signal buried in here that is likely not controlled for, depending on how granular their controls are. White-German and White-Italian are much more (10-13 percent) likely to be conservative leaning than White-Irish or White-British. Hispanic-Cuban are more likely to be conservative leaning than Hispanic-Mexican.

Now, what would be interesting is to build a model that accounts for this "knowledge" and see if it can beat the out-of-the-box classifier :-) I'd assume it can, and the question is: how far can a bit of manual modeling bring us?

Maybe they asked the wrong questions, but I think that's the point of the questionnaire model.

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

#392

Post by bolangi » Sat, Mar 06, 2021, 4:15 AM UTC

So basically not at all.

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

#393

Post by throw7 » Sat, Mar 06, 2021, 4:20 AM UTC

This is hilarious study. This is like Zuckerberg calling us dumbfucks.

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

#394

Post by coldelectrons » Sat, Mar 06, 2021, 5:50 AM UTC

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.)

I'm sure that's exactly what the tech giants will do in their feudal-governed cities they are going to carve out of Nevada.

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

#395

Post by anigbrowl » Sat, Mar 06, 2021, 5:53 AM UTC

cirenehc wrote: post #390

anigbrowl wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think 'controlling for age [,etc]' means?

Please state what you want to say. No need to be passive aggressive.

You quoted the part about controlling for age, then described the sort of mistake that comes from not controlling for age. So I would like to know what you think it means, in order to meet you where you are. I'm not expressing aggression toward you.

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

#396

Post by coldelectrons » Sat, Mar 06, 2021, 6:04 AM UTC

alcover wrote: post #174

mabbo wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Sorry for my platitude but ML is only a tool. Nefarious usage gets counter-balnced by e.g. identifying tumours.

It doesn't balance out; nefarious usage is going to cause many, many tiny harms that are harder to detect, and many larger harms that will be excused, up to and including denying that beneficial use of indentifying tumors, because algorithms are going to be presented as beyond reproach.

Beyond detecting union affinity, maybe someone will also makes its ML twin that predicts how much they can underpay someone.

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

#397

Post by dang » Sat, Mar 06, 2021, 6:23 AM UTC

nullserver wrote: post #370

cies wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The words conservative and liberal have wildly other meanings outside of the US. Even in the US they are not well agreed upon (especially the definitions, people seem to know which one to pick though when they have to).

Some dumbed down US conservative principles. A conservative may only care about some of these. Financial: balanced budget types. Government: Common defense, otherwise minimal. Responsibility: Your job to feed and cloth yourself. Morals: don’t kill babies. Religious: Act like God watches you and you will be judged.

Please do not do ideological flamewar on HN. It's not what this site is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#398

Post by dang » Sat, Mar 06, 2021, 6:23 AM UTC

unanswered wrote: post #376

nullserver wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some dumbed down US conservative principles. A conservative may only care about some of these. Financial: balanced budget types. Government: Common defense, otherwise minimal. Responsibility: Your job to feed and cloth yourself. Morals: don’t kill babies. Religious: Act like God watches you and you will be judged.

[flagged]

Please do not do ideological flamewar on HN. It's not what this site is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#399

Post by unanswered » Sat, Mar 06, 2021, 7:26 AM UTC

dang wrote: post #398

unanswered wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Please do not do ideological flamewar on HN. It's not what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I admit that I am impressed that the comment id of your reply to parent comment is smaller than the comment id of this comment. I didn't think you had it in you.

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

#400

Post by croniev » Sat, Mar 06, 2021, 8:00 AM UTC

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.

I'm sure you're right. But it makes no difference, because when the facial recognition is applied, I think the likelyhood that people will have the same "grooming cues" as they do in their profile pictures is pretty high. If I have short hair in my profile pic, I probably have short hair in my everyday life, in the moment that my face is recorded and processed, as well. Yes, I choose how my face looks myself. But that does not mean anything, as objectively it is the same, whether I intended to or not.