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Another Scientific Incarnation of Selective Correlation
When the 19th century was young, a Viennese physician Franz Joseph Gall got the ball rolling for the "science" of phrenology. (Not to be confused with phenology.) Phrenology believed that the shape and contour of a person's skull revealed their character, and thus could be used by employers and the criminal justice system to identify the lazy and the miscreants with simply a few quick measurements.
It also came in handy to justify slavery in the U.S., as depicted in Tarantino's Django Unchained.
Phrenology never went away, but went on to lurk in spin-offs such as eugenics. And if there were to be an updated incarnation of using a few quick body measurements to find the evil among us, it would have to employ sci/tech terms as "researchers", "algorithms" and "AI".
And so it does: Convict-spotting algorithm criticised
Researchers trained an algorithm using more than 1,500 photos of Chinese citizens, hundreds of them convicts.
They said the program was then able to correctly identify criminals in further photos 89% of the time. But the research, which has not been peer reviewed, has been criticised by criminology experts who say the AI may reflect bias in the justice system. "This article is not looking at people's behaviour, it is looking at criminal conviction..."
So, will AI ever get this god-like?
[Continues...]
AI Can Predict the Future Criminals Based on Facial Features
The bankrupt attempt to infer moral qualities from physiology was a popular pursuit for millennia, particularly among those who wanted to justify the supremacy of one racial group over another. But phrenology, which involved studying the cranium to determine someone's character and intelligence, was debunked around the time of the Industrial Revolution, and few outside of the pseudo-scientific fringe would still claim that the shape of your mouth or size of your eyelids might predict whether you'll become a rapist or thief.
Not so in the modern age of Artificial Intelligence, apparently: In a paper titled "Automated Inference on Criminality using Face Images," two Shanghai Jiao Tong University researchers say they fed "facial images of 1,856 real persons" into computers and found "some discriminating structural features for predicting criminality, such as lip curvature, eye inner corner distance, and the so-called nose-mouth angle." They conclude that "all four classifiers perform consistently well and produce evidence for the validity of automated face-induced inference on criminality, despite the historical controversy surrounding the topic."
[...] The study contains virtually no discussion of why there is a "historical controversy" over this kind of analysis — namely, that it was debunked hundreds of years ago. Rather, the authors trot out another discredited argument to support their main claims:, that computers can't be racist, because they're computers:
[...] Absent, too, is any discussion of the incredible potential for abuse of this software by law enforcement. Kate Crawford, an AI researcher with Microsoft Research New York, MIT, and NYU, told The Intercept, "I'd call this paper literal phrenology, it's just using modern tools of supervised machine learning instead of calipers. It's dangerous pseudoscience."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 27 2016, @05:06AM
Classic Big Data stupid.
They trained it with data from the current criminal justice system. And they didn't train it on the data of all the unsolved crimes because there is no data, that's why they are unsolved. So all the current biases of the current system are baked into the AI.
This doesn't predict criminal behavior based on looks. It predicts police and jury behavior based on looks. The fact that it can predict who will be arrested and who will be convicted based just on looks is an indictment of the system. That's fucked up.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Sunday November 27 2016, @05:41AM
It's also how new recruits are "shown the ropes," perpetuating the current system.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 27 2016, @05:54AM
It's too bad that the obvious conclusion doesn't fit the biases of political correctness, and therefore can't possibly be correct. Er, wait, that's not how reality works.
There are numerous other ways that looks can relate to criminality. Probably more than one has merit.
Suppose a person is ugly. It's not just juries that might be biased against them. Life in general is biased against them. Finding a job is difficult, finding a spouse is difficult... all leading to a person who is poor, depressed, sexually frustrated, tormented by bullies, lonely, jobless, and so on. So yes these people do actually commit the crimes.
Brain shape matters. It's not at all simple of course, but it clearly matters. Head shape and brain shape are related; they grow together. The shape of one is suggestive of the shape of the other, and thus it is perfectly reasonable to expect that there is some correlation between looks and personality based on physical attributes.
Personality causes changes in appearance. Some people stay out of the Sun, while others stay in the Sun. Some people drink, some people smoke, and some people do meth. Some people always brush their teeth.
Hormones affect appearance and personality. Testosterone causes a squarer jawline, and it also increases aggression. There are other hormones, environmental contaminants, diet differences, and many other things that affect both looks and personality.
(Score: 4, Funny) by aristarchus on Sunday November 27 2016, @08:54AM
Brain shape matters. It's not at all simple of course, but it clearly matters. Head shape and brain shape are related; they grow together. The shape of one is suggestive of the shape of the other, and thus it is perfectly reasonable to expect that there is some correlation between looks and personality based on physical attributes.
That right there is your classic phrenology, circa 1807! Perfectly reasonable, since they ought to be related, to assume that brain shape and skull shape are related to behavior, based on absolutely no reasons at all. Reminds me of the old practice of putting a knife under the mattress of a woman in labor, to "cut the pain", don't ya know! If you make a doll in the likeness of someone that contains their actual hair or fingernail clippings, if you hurt doll, it will hurt them, because, you know, the are related!
And, it works with more than skulls! Did you know the number one correlation to trustworthiness is the size of a man's hands? Never trust men with small hands. It is just natural that there is some connection, because there is also a connection between a man's foot size and his size elsewhere! Everybody knows this, my granny told me about it. This is why clowns have such big shoes.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday November 27 2016, @11:37AM
I dunno about clowns but it's certainly why I wear big shoes.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Sunday November 27 2016, @10:53PM
My grandma also said, if you stuff some wadded up newspaper down into the toes, your feet won't slide around so much in your extra-large shoes. Advice you could probably use, Buzzing One!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 28 2016, @01:39AM
I have heard about the big shoes meaning something else on me is big.... I wear size 12's.
The other part of me that is big apparently is my mouth.... I guess from putting my foot in it so many times.
I only wish it would apply midway, so I could do away with the saw palmetto.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday November 27 2016, @12:58PM
And, it works with more than skulls!
More on topic, its more like female breast size and shape (non-sagging) correlates with male interest resulting in some "unpredictable astrological" correlation with family income.
Exact shape of little toe toenail isn't very exciting so that has a random correlation with family income.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday November 27 2016, @02:16PM
The most obvious use for this tech is getting out of jury duty - tell them (truthfully) that you can spot a criminal from a lineup easily: "it's all in the distance between the eyes."
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Informative) by jmorris on Sunday November 27 2016, @03:42PM
Getting out of jury duty is a trivial exercise, assuming you are in the U.S. Just tell them you are a "fully informed juror", use those exact words and not only will you be instantly escorted out of the room, if they have the slightest doubt whether you have spoken to any of the others in the pool they will flush that jury pool and try again. Google will give you the details, offtopic for here.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Monday November 28 2016, @01:42AM
Isn't it a shame to have "fully informed jurors" kicked out of the pool. To me this is like saying I want someone to fix my truck, but if he knows anything about mechanics, he is disqualified.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 28 2016, @07:02PM
The jury system in the USA is screwed up big time. Jury filtering is a Yuuuuge waste of resources, and defeats the purpose of having a jury system. Professional jurors may be more efficient because they can fill out a general questionnaire up front so that most filtering (if still allowed) is done at desks instead of in the court room. There's plenty of unemployed and retired people to tap. True, this biases the jury pool toward the unemployed and retired, but incentives can be given to both sides to encourage their agreement to use professional jurors. They can still opt for the current system.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 27 2016, @02:19PM
Suppose a person is ugly. It's not just juries that might be biased against them. Life in general is biased against them. Finding a job is difficult, finding a spouse is difficult... all leading to a person who is poor, depressed, sexually frustrated, tormented by bullies, lonely, jobless, and so on. So yes these people do actually commit the crimes.
That, right there, is a red pill excuse for being an asshole.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 27 2016, @07:13AM
They trained it with data from the current criminal justice system
They trained it using Chinese citizens. Being a caucasian of European heritage I don't see anything wrong here. /s
(Score: 0, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday November 27 2016, @11:08AM
Agreed. I read the article before this story was posted looking for the specific features which correlated with criminality - expecting wide and flat noses, full lips, a protruding lower jaw, and curly hair. What I found was something specific to China.