Two proment LGBT groups lashed out at rearchers who found that a facial regnn software uld duce whether a person was gay or heterosexual.
Contents:
- 'I WAS SHOCKED WAS SO EASY': MEET THE PROFSOR WHO SAYS FACIAL REGNN N TELL IF YOU'RE GAY
- THE FAMO AI GAYDAR STUDY WAS REPEATED – AND, NO, N'T TELL IF YOU'RE STRAIGHT OR NOT JT OM YOUR FACE
- WHY STANFORD REARCHERS TRIED TO CREATE A ‘GAYDAR’ MACHE
'I WAS SHOCKED WAS SO EASY': MEET THE PROFSOR WHO SAYS FACIAL REGNN N TELL IF YOU'RE GAY
Weeks after his trip to Mosw, Kosski published a ntroversial paper which he showed how face-analysg algorhms uld distguish between photographs of gay and straight people. ”In a paper published last year, Kosski and a Stanford puter scientist, Yilun Wang, reported that a mache-learng system was able to distguish between photos of gay and straight people wh a high gree of accuracy. Prented wh two pictur – one of a gay person, the other straight – the algorhm was traed to distguish the two 81% of s volvg imag of men and 74% of photographs of women.
Human judg, by ntrast, were able to intify the straight and gay people 61% and 54% of s, rpectively.
THE FAMO AI GAYDAR STUDY WAS REPEATED – AND, NO, N'T TELL IF YOU'RE STRAIGHT OR NOT JT OM YOUR FACE
“I was jt shocked to disver that is so easy for an algorhm to distguish between gay and straight people, ” Kosski tells me.
’ Photograph: Jason Henry/The GuardianNeher did many other people, and there was an immediate backlash when the rearch – dubbed “AI gaydar” – was previewed the Enomist magaze. ) There was also anger that Kosski had nducted rearch on a technology that uld be ed to persecute gay people untri such as Iran and Sdi Arabia, where homosexualy is punishable by ath. His fdgs are nsistent wh the prenatal hormone theory of sexual orientatn, he says, which argu that the levels of androgens foet are exposed to the womb help terme whether people are straight or gay.
WHY STANFORD REARCHERS TRIED TO CREATE A ‘GAYDAR’ MACHE
“Th, ” he wr his paper, “gay men are predicted to have smaller jaws and chs, slimmer eyebrows, longer nos and larger foreheads... He be prickly when I prs him on Rsia, potg to s dire rerd on gay rights.
(A uple of days later, Kosski tells me he has checked his slis; fact, he says, he didn’t tell the Rsians about his “AI gaydar”. YouTube was also sued by LGBTQ+ creators who said that ntent moratn systems flagged the words “gay” and “lbian. Unsurprisgly, that origal work kicked up a massive fs at the time, wh many skeptil that puters, which have zero knowledge or unrstandg of somethg as plex as sexualy, uld really predict whether someone was gay or straight om their fizzog.
The Stanford eggheads behd that first rearch – Yilun Wang, a graduate stunt, and Michal Kosski, an associate profsor – even claimed that not only uld nral works ss out a person’s sexual orientatn, algorhms had an even better gaydar than humans.