This psychologist’s “gaydar” rearch mak unfortable. That’s the pot. - Vox

Contents:

• ROW OVER AI THAT 'INTIFI GAY FAC'
• THIS PSYCHOLOGIST’S “GAYDAR” REARCH MAK UNFORTABLE. THAT’S THE POT.
• FACIAL HTS SHARPEN PEOPLE'S 'GAYDAR'
• THE FAMO AI GAYDAR STUDY WAS REPEATED – AND, NO, N'T TELL IF YOU'RE STRAIGHT OR NOT JT OM YOUR FACE
• 'I WAS SHOCKED WAS SO EASY': ​MEET THE PROFSOR WHO SAYS FACIAL REGNN ​​N TELL IF YOU'RE GAY
• ARTIFICIAL TELLIGENCE N INTIFY 'GAY FAC' OM A PICTURE, STUDY CLAIMS
• HRC AND GLAAD RELEASE A SILLY STATEMENT ABOUT THE ‘GAY FACE’ STUDY
• WHY STANFORD REARCHERS TRIED TO CREATE A ‘GAYDAR’ MACHE
• WHILE STRAIGHT MEN FACE TNAL CRISIS, GAY MEN EXCEL AMILLY, STUDY FDS

ROW OVER AI THAT 'INTIFI GAY FAC'

Image source, Stanford UniversyImage ptn, The study created pose fac judged most and least likely to belong to homosexualsA facial regnn experiment that claims to be able to distguish between gay and heterosexual people has sparked a row between s creators and two leadg LGBT rights Stanford Universy study claims s software regnis facial featur relatg to sexual orientatn that are not perceived by human work has been acced of beg "dangero" and "junk science" the scientists volved say the are "knee-jerk" reactns.

Details of the peer-reviewed project are due to be published the Journal of Personaly and Social jawsFor their study, the rearchers traed an algorhm g the photos of more than 14, 000 whe Amerins taken om a datg ed between one and five of each person's pictur and took people's sexualy as self-reported on the datg rearchers said the rultg software appeared to be able to distguish between gay and heterosexual men and women.

THIS PSYCHOLOGIST’S “GAYDAR” REARCH MAK UNFORTABLE. THAT’S THE POT.

In one tt, when the algorhm was prented wh two photos where one picture was fely of a gay man and the other heterosexual, was able to terme which was which 81% of the women, the figure was 71%. "But their software did not perform as well other suatns, cludg a tt which was given photos of 70 gay men and 930 heterosexual asked to pick 100 men "most likely to be gay" missed 23 of s summary of the study, the Enomist - which was first to report the rearch - poted to several "limatns" cludg a ncentratn on whe Amerins and the e of datg se pictur, which were "likely to be particularly revealg of sexual orientatn".

"This rearch isn't science or news, but 's a scriptn of bety standards on datg s that ignor huge segments of the LGBTQ (lbian, gay, bisexual, transgenr and queer/qutng) muny, cludg people of lour, transgenr people, olr dividuals, and other LGBTQ people who don't want to post photos on datg s, " said Jim Halloran, chief digal officer of Glaad, a media-monorg body. "The 'subtle' differenc uld be a nsequence of gay and straight people choosg to portray themselv systematilly different ways, rather than differenc facial appearance self, " said Prof Benedict Jon, who ns the Face Rearch Lab at the Universy of was also important, he said, for the technil tails of the analysis algorhm to be published to see if they stood up to rmed cricism. Whout beg aware of , most people n accurately intify gay men by face aloneAlthough I've always wanted this particular superhuman power, I've never been very good at tectg other men's sexual orientatn.

FACIAL HTS SHARPEN PEOPLE'S 'GAYDAR'

"Th, " the thors wrote, "by g photos of gay and straight dividuals that they themselv did not post, we were able to remove the fluence of self-prentatn and much of the potential selectn bias that may be prent photos om personal advertisements.

THE FAMO AI GAYDAR STUDY WAS REPEATED – AND, NO, N'T TELL IF YOU'RE STRAIGHT OR NOT JT OM YOUR FACE

And even wh the more strgent ntrols, the participants were able to intify the gay fac at levels greater than chance—aga even on those trials where the fac were flickered on the screen for a mere 50 lisends.

For example, when shown only the eye regn ("whout brows and cropped to the outer nthi so that not even "crow's-feet" were visible"), perceivers were amazgly still able to accurately intify a man as beg gay.

"A man, ually homosexual, wh a distctly effete facial stcture wh some very specific featur; a strong jawle [sic] that lacks promence, space between the ey that rell people wh down syndrome [sic], and a slopg, long forehead. Now, that one's rather silly and sensatnalized—even polilly spect—and there's certaly no scientific evince support of the claims about the "mongoloid" featur of homosexual men's fac. More ntroversially, Kosski and Wang’s paper claimed that the program based s cisn on differenc facial stcture; that gay men’s fac were more feme and lbian women’s fac were more mascule.

'I WAS SHOCKED WAS SO EASY': ​MEET THE PROFSOR WHO SAYS FACIAL REGNN ​​N TELL IF YOU'RE GAY

A smart person wh a puter and accs to the ter n judge sexual orientatn of anyone the world, or lns of people simultaneoly wh very ltle effort, which mak liv of homophob and opprsive regim jt a ty b more easy. People n judge wh surprisg accuracy whether someone is gay or straight — even when they're lookg at a black-and-whe photograph, cropped of hair and intifyg marks, and prented upsi fdgs om a Universy of Washgton study suggt people e a batn of clu om dividual facial featur and om the way those featur f together to make snap judgments about sexual orientatn, said rearcher Joshua Tabak, a graduate stunt psychology.

But even upsi down, people are good at procsg dividual facial and his -thor exploed this quirk of the bra by prentg photographs of 111 gay men, 122 straight men, 87 gay women and 93 straight women to 129 stunt volunteers. "It's really tertg to speculate that there might be this ironic effect that bee we're more faiar wh the ncept of gay men [ the media], maybe we're more liberal wh labelg a man gay.

ARTIFICIAL TELLIGENCE N INTIFY 'GAY FAC' OM A PICTURE, STUDY CLAIMS

That suggts both facial featur (which n be procsed upsi-down and right-si-up photos) and facial nfiguratn provi hts to orientatn, the rearchers report Wednday (May 16) the journal PLoS remas to be seen how or if people e "gaydar" real life, when they have more to go on than a glimpse of a photograph, Tabak said. Th, our rults showed that differenc facial morphology of homosexual and heterosexual men do not simply mirror variatn femy, and the stereotypic associatn of feme lookg men as homosexual may nfound judgments of sexual orientatn.

HRC AND GLAAD RELEASE A SILLY STATEMENT ABOUT THE ‘GAY FACE’ STUDY

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.

WHY STANFORD REARCHERS TRIED TO CREATE A ‘GAYDAR’ MACHE

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. “Moreover, this entire le of thought is premised on the ia that there is value to be gaed workg out why 'gay face' classifiers might work – value further scribg, fg and settg out the methodology for any tpot dictator or bigot wh a puter who might want to opprs queer people. 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.

WHILE STRAIGHT MEN FACE TNAL CRISIS, GAY MEN EXCEL AMILLY, STUDY FDS

”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.

’ 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.