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Phrenology is Back, Baby! AI is VERY Good at Making Predictions From Face Scans
Join Malcolm and Simone as they delve into the controversial and data-heavy topic of predicting personal traits from facial features. From the discredited study of phrenology to modern AI research, they discuss the potential and ethical implications of determining criminality, political views, sexuality, aggression, and even socioeconomic status just by looking at someone's face. With references to various scientific studies and a touch of humor, this episode offers a thought-provoking look at the intersection of technology, genetics, and human behavior. [00:00:00]
Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. Today we are gonna be doing a very spicy episode on and very, very data, data heavy episode. On phonology for people who dunno was the study of people's skull shape and whether it affected outcomes or intelligence or anything like that. Get out your calipers.
Simone Collins: Ladies and gentlemen. This is gonna be fun.
Speaker 2: She's the sloping brow and cranial bumpy to the career criminal. Ah, sir. Ality was dismissed as quackery 160 years ago. Of course, you'd say that you are the brain pan of a stagecoach tilter.
Simone Collins: They
Malcolm Collins: used to put these big, like clamps on your head to like, measure and like certain, like rich guys, you'd go to their house and they'd like do this to you, to like, oh, it was
Simone Collins: like a party trick. Yeah. Like, you'd have everyone over and someone would get out the calipers and they'd be like, yeah.
And they had like little models of, of, of heads that would show like the different, you know.
Malcolm Collins: Here's what indicates this. One of our very wealthy friends is, is into this these days as well. Getting back into phenology. Yeah,
Simone Collins: a little.
Malcolm Collins: But apparently he is not wrong. Apparent. Well, so phenology does not appear to [00:01:00] work to my knowledge.
I, I can look more into it, but that is not what this episode is on. This episode is on just being able to tell a person's politics, sexuality, criminality. Any number of things from facial features. Can you actually like, even, even worse than phenology, 'cause phenology you need are the calipers. You need all that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Invasive. What can you judge about a person just from looking at their face and how accurately can you judge?
Speaker 3: Hmm.
Malcolm Collins: And if you are like, well, okay, he's gonna point to some minor statistical differences, not that big. Let's just go right into criminality, right? Oh, because this may one of the, okay.
The spiciest. Okay. So fine. There was a study in 2016 called Automated Inference on criminality using face images. It used a supervised machine learning for classification CNNs on [00:02:00] 1,856 Chinese male ID photos, seven 30 convicted criminals and 1,126 non-criminals. It claimed an 89.51% accuracy in determining criminals.
Simone Collins: Oh no,
Malcolm Collins: that's around a nine. That's, that's 0.5. Less than 0.5 away from a 90% accuracy rate at determining who's a criminal. Oh.
Simone Collins: Just from looking at their face.
Malcolm Collins: That is probably more accurate than any other way you could determine a criminal. In fact, I bet court cases aren't even that accurate in determining criminals.
Yes. Seriously, meaningly that the mistake could be in the court case and not the machine. So if you're wondering how, how can you tell a criminal it identified structural face shield features like narrow eye, corner distance, 4%, norm distance, higher lip, cur curvature, 23.4. Wait, so the more
Published on 4 months, 2 weeks ago