TheContact
Member
This is kinda scary I can see this being used to discriminate
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New AI can guess whether you're gay or straight from a photograph, 91% of the time
- Thread starter ghostofsparta
- Start date
I understood VGG Face to be the landmark extractor that was taking measurements of control points. It didn't sound like it was pulling out arbitrary features but actually measuring things and was trained independently of the rest of the network for that task. That would make sense because if you want to say that gay people have different nose bridge sizes then it should be obvious by measuring and plotting which can then be classified with a simple logistic classifier. Otherwise I have no idea how you draw conclusions if it's picking all the features for you, you know it's around the nose, but does that mean they have a piercing or lack a mustache or something?
pffffftttt... Discrimination, in America.... What??? Not here. Not against the Gays.
But seriously I would totally use this confirm suspicions. Does that make me a bad person, probably.
Beardz
Member
The link to that study is dead, the article is here:
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/bering-in-mind/something-queer-about-that-face/
SciencePilot
Member
I see. Thanks for reading the actual paper. It's actually pretty impressive then, given they presented it with equal numbers of heterosexual and homosexual people.
Figure 5 compares the landmark classifier with the deep learning/CNN one, so they definitely seem like 2 separate things. I didn't look too deep into VGG Face though, so I'm not sure. The masking heatmaps look high resolution enough to rule out small features like piercings. When they talk about the facial contour alone getting good results in the author notes though, that definitely refers to the landmark classifier.
Here:
In fact, I would read the last two pages of this thread. They would probably answer any questions about the methodology of this study that may pop up.
Interesting. I wouldn't be surprised if the 9% failure are Kinsey scale 2-4s (roughly 50/50 bisexuals). But things get even more complicated with gender, intersex, etc.
Unfortunately it probably will be a tool to amplify both understanding and discrimination. Think of culturally conservative high schools using it to out and harass gays, ugh.
Unfortunately it probably will be a tool to amplify both understanding and discrimination. Think of culturally conservative high schools using it to out and harass gays, ugh.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
But it's still relevant -- creating a contrived situation where the base rate is lower doesn't mean very much as to the real-world applicability of the technique.
That does not make sense.
OG Shaka Zulu
Member
This study is true in my experience.
theaffection
Member
I thought this was gonna be one of those websites where you put your picture in and it gives you the results. 
Yeah the article specifically has a paragraph saying exactly that.
Mariah Carey
Member
Yeah, for anyone worried that this could be used to out people, keep in mind this is less "gaydar" and more "openly-gaydar".
I wouldn't be so sure about that - note that what the author's notes are more focused on making sure the images used were not 'especially revealing' due to being on a dating site and even outright admits there's no (ethical) way to actually prove people are who they say they are.
That's not to say the study isn't meaningful or interesting, because it still is, it just means it's specifically about self-identifying gay people, as there isn't any way to account for the fact that people often lie about their sexuality or (here's one that I don't see get brought up much but is actually a lot more common than people think) are unaware of their own sexual orientation.
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
Does it have to be? Somethings are interesting to create, just for the sake of. Who knows maybe something good can come from it that was unrelated to the original study.
I mean, assuming this thing is real, at least statistically, it might demonstrate something that should be a net good:
There is something physical and objectively biological about being gay, rather than just some "sinful choice."
Don't get me wrong, that could equally be used as an evil, but it would objectively eliminate the absurd idea that gay people simply chose to be that way. And further, religious people should be more compelled to believe "God" made these people that way, and that they are his children.
Trying to see something good in this.
There is something physical and objectively biological about being gay, rather than just some "sinful choice."
Don't get me wrong, that could equally be used as an evil, but it would objectively eliminate the absurd idea that gay people simply chose to be that way. And further, religious people should be more compelled to believe "God" made these people that way, and that they are his children.
Trying to see something good in this.
PSlayer
Member
It is a strong evidence that being gay/straight may not be a thing that you just learn and that people don't born neutral/empty.It basically shows that (at least in part of course) there are biological mechanisms pushing people to certain behaviours. This is basically what the likes of steven pinker were saying for more than a decade now.
Earthbound64
Banned
What an odd bump after 2 weeks of this not having been posted in.
The post this is in reply to is 16 days old and had numerous responses.
And your point is?