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from the can-it-tell-which-personality-is-currently-active? dept.
This psychologist's "gaydar" research makes us uncomfortable. That's the point.
Michal Kosinski used artificial intelligence to detect sexual orientation. Let him explain why.
By Brian Resnick@B_resnickbrian@vox.com Jan 29, 2018, 12:00pm ESTIn September, Stanford researcher Michal Kosinski published a preprint of a paper that made an outlandish claim: The profile pictures we upload to social media and dating websites can be used to predict our sexual orientation.
Kosinski, a Polish psychologist who studies human behavior from the footprints we leave online, has a track record of eyebrow-raising results. In 2013, he co-authored a paper that found that people's Facebook "likes" could be used to predict personal characteristics like personality traits (a finding that reportedly inspired the conservative data firm Cambridge Analytica).
For the new paper, Kosinski built a program with his co-author Yilun Wang using a common artificial intelligence program to scan more than 30,000 photos uploaded to an unnamed dating site. The software's job? To figure out a pattern about what could distinguish a gay person's face from a straight person's.
I hate the terms "Must see TV" and "must read" and similar terms. But, this article comes pretty close to "must read" for those who wish to understand where computer are going to take us. Especially read the conversation between Resnick and Kosinski - the research is not really about homosexuality, but about analyzing people in general.
Michal Kosinski
Exactly.
It proves to be uncomfortably accurate at making predictions.
We know that companies are already collecting this data and using such black boxes to predict future behavior. Google, Facebook, and Netflix are doing this.
Basically, most of the modern platforms are just virtually based on recording digital footprints and predicting future behavior.
Psychologists would say, "Oh, yes, that's true, but not personality. This is just pseudoscience." I'm like, wait. You can accept that you can predict 57 things, but if I say, "What about 58?" you say, "This is absolutely theoretically impossible. This is pseudoscience. How can you even say that?"
Science or pseudoscience, we can bet that corporate America and the government are going to be using this.
A smart person with a computer and access to the internet can judge sexual orientation of anyone in the world, or millions of people simultaneously with very little effort, which makes lives of homophobes and oppressive regimes just a tiny bit more easy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 01 2018, @04:02PM (11 children)
I never made an FB account nor ever want one.
It is now seeing a drop in usage. Alarming investors?
I like MDC have my own issues and stay outside looking in.
My family is my refuge. I am mostly happy which is huge for me.
Being into AI I sort of feel like I have joined the dark side due to the shear power of it
My thoughts are still leave these platforms as they are just ways to further manipulate/pacify you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 01 2018, @04:29PM (3 children)
Sarah Connor is on her way to your house with a sniper rifle. Stay away from the windows.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 01 2018, @04:44PM (2 children)
Sarah Connor? [fanpop.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 01 2018, @04:49PM (1 child)
Sarah Connor? [jango-raid.ml]
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Friday February 02 2018, @05:26AM
Humm...black page, white text, mystery links...The guys with the white coats with extra long sleeves are just about at your door.
When life isn't going right, go left.
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Thursday February 01 2018, @05:33PM (1 child)
Good news. Facebook has already made a profile for you and filled it in FAR more completely than you could ever imagine. Photos. Shopping habits. Browsing habits. Friends, relatives, acquaintances, airline tickets, DMV info.
If it makes you feel better though continue to deny the reality of it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 01 2018, @07:15PM
Yep, I understand what a shadow account is.
However, why do I need to directly participate?
Knowing what you know about what it is being used for why do you?
By the time this 1984esque reality goes from benign (at best since we already know it is having negative consequences for people’s happiness etc) to bad I stand a good chance to be ash.
But my daughter will be in the thick of it.
Just hope the other side isn’t in power (not your beliefs) when these hounds are released.
Admittedly, all I really get at this point is my own private pat on the back. Little consolation given how I envision this going. But it helps me sleep at night nevertheless.
The strange thing to me is so many others, like yourself, see what I see and trust it fully.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday February 01 2018, @05:53PM (3 children)
No FB for me either. But you may already be tagged in FB because you may appear in photos with other FB using people, for example, at disney world.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 01 2018, @07:23PM
What about your FBI account?
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday February 01 2018, @08:16PM (1 child)
That would require to have been at Disney world to begin with. ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday February 01 2018, @11:44PM
I have a FB account - one without my real name. I use it to keep tabs on things, like snow and inclement weather days at work. I know that I've been tagged in dozens of photos, with my real name. I can't say whether FB has made the connection between the real me, and the fake me. I'm not offering them any assistance, though. They can just fuck off and die, for all I care.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday February 02 2018, @07:28AM
I'll add to it: if you can't abstain, troll the hack out of them. Present a false image of yourself, a non-sensical one if possible. Used to be called 'poisoning attack', now it 'evolved' into Adversarial Machine Learning [wikipedia.org]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford