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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: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Monday September 11 2017, @09:46PM (4 children)
It seems like there is a significant acculturation factor, too, no matter what the ultimate determination of genetic causality is shown to be. Western society has become much more accepting of female-female relationships in the last 20 years, with lesbian assignations having become a staple of popular culture. The same might become true of gay relationships as well.
It may be that in the not too-distant future people born with genetic pre-disposition for exclusive same-sex relationships will obtain, but many other people might become much more sexually fluid given that society no longer thinks it's a big deal who you sleep with.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Monday September 11 2017, @11:41PM (3 children)
Western society has become much more accepting of same sex relationships, but I'm not sure that the last 20 years is a good time frame to show that - in fact depending how you measure it very well might show the reverse.
I think it makes more sense from a slightly longer timeline though. If we go back to the roots of western civilization, looking particularly at Greek antiquity for example, homosexual acts were well known, and often discussed, sometimes lauded, sometimes derided, depending on the writer, but certainly the acts were well known, they happened and probably no less often than today. But one huge piece of our modern world view is completely missing - this notion of a *homosexual person* rather than person who sometimes performs homosexual acts.
The acts were well known in antiquity and ever since. In some times and places they were horrible crimes, in others normal and expected, but in no case were they considered evidence of a new and different sort of person.
The modern innovation was to turn this into an identity. And doing that is actually contradictory to our liberal ideal of 'it's not a big deal.' If this is a core of your identity it most certainly IS a big deal! It's probably the biggest deal, now isn't it?
So I think we can have one or the other but not both. If it's not a big deal, we as a society need to quit acting like it is.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Mykl on Tuesday September 12 2017, @02:57AM (1 child)
Well put. Anything that you put your identity to is obviously a big deal to you, and is used by yourself as an indication of 'tribe membership' or a point of difference to others.
I had never really thought of it that way, but it does seem incongruous to say that it's not a big deal when you're basing your whole identity on it. Having said that, most of the gay people I know usually only bring up their sexuality in a contextual conversation, not as a form of introduction. I think I would tire of someone that continually advertises their sexual preference, political affiliation, or veganism in all conversations.
By the way, the above post in no way means to compare homosexuals to vegans. I would never insult homosexuals like that.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday September 12 2017, @03:52AM
That's my experience as well - for the most part. People that I know personally, friends? Yeah, they just want to be treated like everyone else, get a fair shake at work, get a paycheck and go home and enjoy it their own way on their own time, just like everyone else. But the people that call themselves 'activists' or 'leaders' these days, not people I know personally but public figures, that seems to be a group with quite a different profile, with completely different goals and means.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday September 12 2017, @03:40PM
The modern innovation was to turn this into an identity.
I think the reason for this is fairly simple: it's a reaction to most of society pushing heterosexuality as the only acceptable practice, with a large dose of religiosity behind that. This has been the case, really, since Christianity and other Abrahamic religions rose to normalcy. Anyone who didn't toe the line (following the correct religion, having the correct sexual orientation) was a "deviant" and had to be severely punished or killed. If it wasn't a big deal, then it wouldn't be an "identity"; it'd be more like the Greek days (though even there, they had certain gender roles and expectations; they could have male lovers, esp. in the military, but were still expected to marry and have children).
Also, note the Kinsey Scale (a relatively modern invention), which does posit that humans are generally not 100% homo or hetero, but somewhere in-between, though frequently in practice they tend to adopt one side or the other. But it's not uncommon for "hetero" people to do homo acts in secret sometimes (like the infamous Sen. Larry Craig (R) of Idaho), probably because they're really in the middle somewhere and not able to act on the homo desires because of social consequences.
And doing that is actually contradictory to our liberal ideal of 'it's not a big deal.'
That's the ideal; modern society isn't there yet, so that's why people are making a big issue out of it I think. Basically, if the conservatives would either die out or drop the anti-homosexual stance, and it really did become "no big deal" across society, then I don't think you'd see any more activism or making it one's identity (after a generation or so), as there'd be no need.