
AI can predict the future criminals based on facial features - chang2301
https://theintercept.com/2016/11/18/troubling-study-says-artificial-intelligence-can-predict-who-will-be-criminals-based-on-facial-features/
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tlb
I can also look at the 6 pictures and accurately guess who the bad guys are.
The 3 who are frowning like they're being photographed against their will for
a mug shot are bad. The 3 guys earnestly smiling and wearing suits are good.

I dunno if the sample from that page is representative of their test set, but
if so, it's pretty weak.

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jstewartmobile
Don't get distracted with the whole pseudoscience/phrenology angle.

The police state doesn't really care if people are criminals or not. It just
wants to know who is more likely to give them trouble: A common thug who
scares your voters is a problem. A white-collar criminal who makes regular
campaign contributions is not.

Since that could probably be gleaned from facial characteristics (expression,
grooming, style, oppressed-ethnicity-traits, etc.), I'm sure this scratches an
itch.

They'll be running this on us in the US and Britain before you know it.

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llukas
In US it is already working as intended - it is called "crime of doing X while
black" \- no need for subtle facial characteristics, recognition is easy and
fool-proof.

Do you see now why it is stupid?

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jstewartmobile
In the US, duh. In other countries, where the difference between the oppressor
and the oppressed is more subtle, this provides "value" (like different castes
of Indians, or upperclass/lowerclass/Irish/Scottish/English/Welsh in Britain).

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cpbotha
This post by Yonatan Zunger (Head of Infrastructure for the Google Assistant,
and a great thinker) on Google+ is insightful:
[https://plus.google.com/+YonatanZunger/posts/J8qrWvmhwNF?sfc...](https://plus.google.com/+YonatanZunger/posts/J8qrWvmhwNF?sfc=true)

The conclusion says it best:

"Contrary to the Intercept article, this paper isn't a failure of ML ethics;
it's a failure of ordinary academic ethics, dressed up as machine learning.
The paper is bullshit, plain and simple.﻿"

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unimpressive
I find it interesting how hard the author focuses on disparaging the authors
of this paper for daring to investigate this question, rather than trying to
argue with the empirical results of their research.

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llukas
If you paid attention on history lessons you'd know why going this path is
very dangerous.

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QuercusMax
If you read the article, these aren't even convicted criminals -- they're just
suspects from some Chinese database. This is a truly horrible piece of
"research".

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finishingmove
Things like this can only be endorsed by malicious or very stupid people (if
you are getting excited about this and have Minority report pop into your head
-- you're of the latter).

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boznz
This is total bullshit, the best crooks all look like bank managers for a good
reason

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r721
Recent discussion of this study:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12983827](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12983827)

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squozzer
I'm not sure we want computers perfecting human biases. I will say that
Hollywood (and probably other movie cultures as well) is not above using mean-
looking people to represent heavies in film.

Which, despite its unfairness, does give us gems such as this --
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8hjFmPCSjg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8hjFmPCSjg)

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jupiter90000
There is no independent data set used to validate the model(s). We have no
idea how the models will generalize beyond this data set.

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throwaway4891a
The big questions which need further research:

0\. Beyond socio/psychopathy, are there genetic markers for criminal
tendencies?

1\. Do unconscious biases of other people motivate certain looking people to
engage in crime?

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Jupe
Who chose the 1,856 source images?

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tnzn
Yet another example of shitty science.

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roryisok
Are we bringing back frenology now?

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dilemma
Eugenics.

