Artificial intelligence can accurately guess whether people are gay or straight
based on photos of their faces,according to new research suggesting that
machines can have significantly better "gaydar" than humans.
The study from Stanford University-which found that a computer algorithm
coukd correctly distinguish between gay and straight men 81% of the time,and
74% for women-has raised questions about the biological origins of sexual
orientation,the ethics of facial-detection technology and the potential for
this kind of software to violate people's privacy or be abused for anti-LGBT
purposes.
The machine intelligence tested in the research,which was published in the
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and first reported in the Economist,
was based on a sample of more than 35,000 facial images that men and women
publicly posted on a US dating website.The researchers,Michal Kosinski and Yilun
Wang,extracted features from the images using"deep neural networks",meaning a
sophisticated mathematical system that learns to analyze visuals based on a
large dataset.
The research found that gay men and women tended to have"gender-atypical"features,
expressions and"grooming styles",essentially meaning gay men appeared more feminine
and vice versa.The data also identified certain trends,including that gay men had
narrower jaws,longer noses and larger foreheads than straight men,and that gay
women had larger jaws and smaller foreheads compared to straight women.
Human judges performed much worse than the algorithm,accurately identifying
orientation only 61% of the time for men and 54% for women.Broadly,that means"faces
contain much more information about sexual orientation than can be perceived and
interpreted by the human brain",the authors wrote.
The paper suggested that the findings provide"strong support"for the theoory that
sexual orientation stems from exposure to certain hormones vefore birth,meaning
people are born gay and being queer is not a choice.The machine's lower success
rate for women also could support the notion that female sexual orientation is more
fluid.
While the findings have clear limits when it comes to gender and sexuality-people
of color were not included in the study,and there was no consideration of
transgender or bisexual people-the implications for artificial intelligence(AI)
are vast and alarming.With billions of facial images of people stored on social
media sites and in government databases,the researchers suggested that public
data could be used to detect people's sexual orientation without their consent.
It's easy to imagine spouses using the technology on partners they suspect are
closeted,or teenagers using the algorithm on themselves or their peers.More
frighteningly,governments that continue to prosecute LGBT people could
hypothetically use the technology to out target populations.That means building
this kind of software and publicizing it is itself controversial given concerns
that it could encourage harmful applications.
But the authors argued that the technology already exists,and its capabilities
are important to expose so that governments and companies can proactively
consider privacy risks and the need for safeguards and regulations.
"It's certainly unsettling.Like any new tool,if it gets into the wrong hands,
it can be used for ill purposes,"said Nick Rule,an associate professor of
psychology at the University of Toronto,who has published research on the
science of gaydar"If you can start profiling people based on their appearance,
then identifying them and doyng horrible things to them,that's really bad."