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posted by Fnord666 on Monday September 11 2017, @05:57PM   Printer-friendly
from the that's-a-silly-name-for-an-AI dept.

Stanford University researchers have used software in an attempt to determine sexual orientation from photos:

"Deep neural networks are more accurate than humans at detecting sexual orientation from facial images" is the title of an article by Stanford University's Michal Kosinski and Yilun Wang, to be published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The abstract:

We show that faces contain much more information about sexual orientation than can be perceived and interpreted by the human brain. We used deep neural networks to extract features from 35,326 facial images. These features were entered into a logistic regression aimed at classifying sexual orientation. Given a single facial image, a classifier could correctly distinguish between gay and heterosexual men in 81% of cases, and in 74% of cases for women. Human judges achieved much lower accuracy: 61% for men and 54% for women. The accuracy of the algorithm increased to 91% and 83%, respectively, given five facial images per person. Facial features employed by the classifier included both fixed (e.g., nose shape) and transient facial features (e.g., grooming style).

Consistent with the prenatal hormone theory of sexual orientation, gay men and women tended to have gender-atypical facial morphology, expression, and grooming styles. Prediction models aimed at gender alone allowed for detecting gay males with 57% accuracy and gay females with 58% accuracy. Those findings advance our understanding of the origins of sexual orientation and the limits of human perception. Additionally, given that companies and governments are increasingly using computer vision algorithms to detect people's intimate traits, our findings expose a threat to the privacy and safety of gay men and women.

The images and the sexual orientation information were drawn from an online dating site. Note that the study was limited to white people from the United States, because of the relative lack of images of nonwhite gays and lesbians on the site.

Also at TechCrunch, The Advocate, and The Guardian.


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  • (Score: 5, Funny) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday September 11 2017, @08:35PM (2 children)

    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Monday September 11 2017, @08:35PM (#566370) Journal

    Buddy, if being gay were a choice, every woman on the planet would be a lesbian. Don't kid yourself. The fact under 2% or so of us are really dyed in the wool gold-star-toting gay is the strongest possible argument that we don't choose our sexuality. And damn if I don't feel luckier and luckier every day to have hit that 2% chance.

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    I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
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  • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Arik on Monday September 11 2017, @09:52PM (1 child)

    by Arik (4543) on Monday September 11 2017, @09:52PM (#566426) Journal
    Funny, but not insightful.

    No, every woman wouldn't be gay, not even close. Though there is a very real and fairly common phenomena sometimes called the 'college lesbian' you might want to look into.

    "The fact under 2% or so of us are really dyed in the wool gold-star-toting gay is the strongest possible argument that we don't choose our sexuality."

    Really? You don't think anyone would willingly choose to be in such a small minority, for any reason?

    That's fascinating. And I can tell you without a doubt it's incorrect. Jews are approximately 1.4% yet there are still conversions happening every day.

    "And damn if I don't feel luckier and luckier every day to have hit that 2% chance."

    That looks an awful lot like a reason you would want to put yourself in that group - a motivation to make that choice.

    Now let me be clear, I'm not in any way implying that there is not SOMETHING very important in all this that is beyond conscious choice, possibly even beyond environmental influence as well. I don't doubt that for a moment. But we're talking about a lot more than that. We're not talking about the urges of the flesh, we're talking about an *identity* - a social construct. And since it's not one you were born with, the only logical possibility is that it's one you have chosen to wear. It might be a very easy choice to make, because of other things, things you did not choose, but there's still clearly a choice involved.

    There's been a real movement to deny this and it seems to be motivated by the idea that it's easier to convince fit-sitters that you shouldn't be discriminated against if you can convince them there are no choices involved, I get that. But it's generally bad policy to advance false positions for short term tactical gain.
    --
    If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday September 12 2017, @02:13AM

      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Tuesday September 12 2017, @02:13AM (#566503) Journal

      I don't think I've ever seen quite that much self-serving bullshit in one post before. That is...impressively wrong, and what isn't wrong is only not-wrong because it's entirely opinion.

      --
      I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...