Profiling By AI

Facial recognition software has become sophisticated enough that it is going beyond Facebook tags. Chinese researchers trained an Artificial Intelligence (actually a neural network) to guess which people might be criminals based solely on a photograph of them. It turned out to be right about 89.5% of the time. If this is repeatable, then advocates of profiling may feel justified in not treating everyone as if they were equal. Police are known for suggesting that they can tell if someone is a criminal just by looking at them. Some cautions: 1) this was a small study, 2) 89.5% is actually a low success rate considering the implications when compared to medical studies that require over 99%, 3) part of the reason may be self-fulfilling prophecy where people with certain characteristics are treated with distrust which limits their life choices. If it is true, however, automated surveillance may have more serious implications.

(Click on the photo for the link.)

“Neural Network Learns To Identify Criminals By Their Faces” – MIT Technology Review