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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.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday September 11 2017, @09:40PM (4 children)
Let's say (hypothetically) that rather than abortions or embryo selection, the cure is a single pill. Gays and lesbians can choose to take one single pill and turn 99.999% straight. Not very realistic, but whatever.
You're glad to be a lesbian and wouldn't have it any other way today. But there may have been some moment earlier in your life where social/peer pressure, anxiety, or teenage confusion would convince you to take the pill.
That's the nature of the upcoming existential threat to the gay and lesbian communities. Society's pressure to conform combined with a working biological intervention. Some people underwent dark age style conversions or aversion therapy willingly and it drove them to suicide. If something that is safe and effective comes along, I guarantee that people will jump on it.
Then you have the parents. They are going to be presented with a lot of attractive designer baby options in the coming decades. Parents will have the ability to control or at least influence eye color, hair color, skin color, height, physical attractiveness, intelligence, athletic ability, and other traits. Using simple embryo selection, parents already have the ability to eliminate Down syndrome [soylentnews.org] and other genetic disorders. Who's to say that homosexuality won't be put on the list? All that's required is evidence that certain genes are likely to lead to homosexual behavior. Genetic population studies are getting much bigger. For example, the UK wants to sequence 100,000 genomes [genomicsengland.co.uk]. It's entirely possible that these studies could identify clusters of homosexuals without the need for these people to reveal their own sexual orientation to researchers. Thank the pattern-finding capabilities of machine learning.
While it is funny to think about pro-life conservatives grappling over aborting gay embryos/babies, gene editing may offer them an option that they are willing to stomach. Many other parents may readily choose to skip the ~2% of "aberrant" embryos even if they aren't wildly anti-gay elsewhere in life. Because embryo selection or gene editing is a literally life-altering decision that they will probably hide from everyone else anyway - including the kid(s).
If epigenetic factors are to blame for homosexuality instead of genetics, it might be a little more complicated. But I doubt that the "syndrome" will go "uncured" forever.
So jmorris has it about right. LGBT organizations will probably have strong feelings on this subject. If they don't become pro-life, they will at least try to legislate away designer babies. And if that happens, parents will just go to China, South America, Sudan, or wherever has the loosest standards in order to get the procedures done. The whole thing will look a bit like the cochlear implant debate [time.com], only turbocharged.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday September 12 2017, @02:19AM (3 children)
By around adulthood I came to the conclusion that, to put it informally, "haters gonna hate." Even as a child I could tell most people were more full of shit than a bloating septic tank in August. But thanks for second-guessing me! That TOTALLY doesn't get old!
And no, J-Mo does not have it right, because he's just sitting here reveling in the idea of people, any people, suffering. There's no depth, no consideration, no humanity to it; the man is a stone-cold psychopath and he delights in others' pain. Peruse his post history for proof.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday September 12 2017, @03:01AM
Who's hating on whom? All I said is that you or anyone else could have had a moment in their vulnerable teenage years where they could be swayed by a sexual orientation "cure". A lot of people question their identity or orientation early in life. And it's entirely relevant to the topic: cures or prevention of homosexuality. Facial gaydar today, genetic screening tomorrow.
I'd rather respond to the actual ideas in the comment, which I did in part, not the user's entire posting history and a psychological profile.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Mykl on Tuesday September 12 2017, @03:09AM (1 child)
Azuma, I don't think that jmorris (in this particular instance) was actively wishing pain and suffering on anyone. That honor falls to you in this thread.
He was simply speculating on the mental gymnastics that may be required of some people when they encounter a position that may make them hypocrites. I can absolutely see a scenario where someone is OK with aborting a baby with a particular gene (Down Syndrome), yet is not OK with aborting a baby with another particular gene ('likely gay').
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday September 12 2017, @10:05AM
Yeaaaah, no, sorry, but when someone gleefully posts about people "getting triggered," filling their diapers, etc, that's wishing pain on them, and for the express purpose of enjoying it. Again, read the man's post history; this is not a well-socialized human being we're dealing with. I don't know where this zero-sum or worse view of humanity he has comes from, and at this point I don't care anymore.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...