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Comment by mabbo | Hacker News Reader

I think the key line is how much better this system is than humans attempting the same task:

> Political orientation was correctly classified in 72% of liberal–conservative face pairs, remarkably better than chance (50%), human accuracy (55%), or one afforded by a 100-item personality questionnaire (66%).

This isn't a matter of "recognize that old white people are conservative", because people will do that already, and they know all those biases. And the system doesn't lose much accuracy when comparing otherwise similar people.

This system is picking up on things we don't notice. Maybe it's the photos themselves (they are self-selected), maybe it's micro expressions in the face, maybe it's something else entirely.

But damn it's neat and maybe frightening. Imagine if your next hiring manager had a quiet little camera in the corner and chose you based on your predicted approval of unions.

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As noted by gus_massa in another thread, the 55% figure for human accuracy is from a different study with a different datasets, so it's questionable how comparable the results are.

But damn it's neat and maybe frightening. Imagine if your next hiring manager had a quiet little camera in the corner and chose you based on your predicted approval of unions.

This is the dystopian vision of the future I come to HN for. Bravo!

(It's also why I do ML, since I'll be on the front lines to notice if something like that is being deployed. Or at least somewhat more likely.)

> This is the dystopian vision of the future I come to HN for

It's what I'm here for. Fascinating technology- how might I ruin the world with it?

Sorry for my platitude but ML is only a tool. Nefarious usage gets counter-balnced by e.g. identifying tumours.

It doesn't balance out; nefarious usage is going to cause many, many tiny harms that are harder to detect, and many larger harms that will be excused, up to and including denying that beneficial use of indentifying tumors, because algorithms are going to be presented as beyond reproach.

Beyond detecting union affinity, maybe someone will also makes its ML twin that predicts how much they can underpay someone.

I'm sure that's exactly what the tech giants will do in their feudal-governed cities they are going to carve out of Nevada.

> This system is picking up on things we don't notice.

In the case of men at least some studies have found a correlation between testosterone level and political orientation, something that matches well with my anecdotal observations. It is not outlandish to think this manifests in visual cues in even something as limited as a pic.

https://www.mdcthereporter.com/low-testosterone-left/

I have no idea why this comment got downvoted. This is the most scientific explanation possible. In males, more testosterone induces more risk taking, while low testosterone is linked to risk avoidance. Left-wing policies (“nanny state”) cater to people who avoid risks; people who are risk takers prefer right wing policies. Testosterone also affects muscle growth and facial characteristics.

Probably being penalized for linking to an overtly snarky opinion article rather than a scholarly source. Jack-in-the-box links tend not to fare well on HN.

I've learned some things about testosterone 'cos it's interesting. You're slanting it.

People with more testosterone are more unsatisfied, aggressive, sexually driven, restless, and disappointed. This has nothing to do with something as apparently laudable as risk-taking vs. risk-avoiding, and in fact it's quite easy to be loaded with testosterone and yet constantly fretting over enemies and bad stuff you expect to happen, leading to conservative choices (not risky or experimental choices).

Aggressiveness and dissatisfaction are a better match for testosterone, which MAY lead to risk taking but are just as likely to lead to efforts to control and suppress perceived risks.

There's merit in the effects of testosterone but you're off base in terms of what you think it does.

Aggressiveness is only indirectly related to testosterone. Testosterone makes a person defend status. Researchers have created situations where status is determined by generosity, and they found that in these situations the people with more testosterone were more generous.

Aggressiveness is only going to have that association with testosterone when aggressiveness seems like the best strategy to maintain status.

Economic leftism might be associated with less risk-taking, but why do startup founders - people who often take huge risks - tend to skew socially left? It could probably be partly explained by sociological reasons (might be harder to get support/funding if you're perceived as more socially conservative than average), but even accounting for that, I suspect it's mostly correlated with sincere political belief.

That's one problem with studies like this, as the authors point out. Is Paul Graham liberal or conservative in this binary? I think most conservatives in the US would say liberal, but many liberals, and perhaps even most liberals in his general sphere, might say he's conservative due to "complaining about SJWs and the intolerance of the left on Twitter almost daily, and routinely and proactively arguing in favor of lowering taxes for corporations and very wealthy people".

(The obvious answer is he's neither [http://www.paulgraham.com/mod.html] and it's too hard to fit many people into a one-word binary.)

One could also claim conservatives are by definition averse to change and so risk-averse. They (in this contrived weakman argument) are more likely to want to avoid risks from immigration, the demographics of their community shifting, their industry changing and the possibility of having to find a new kind of job, newly developed vaccines, theological consequences of permitting sinful behavior, etc.

These are all intellectually lazy arguments, but the point is I don't think one can reliably sum up "a conservative" or "a liberal" - whatever that is - as being more or less risk-taking.

Startup founders tend to skew socially left the same way supermodels tend to say being attractive is not that important

>why do startup founders - people who often take huge risks - tend to skew socially left?

People high in the big-five personality trait of openness perform well in startups (and perform relatively poorly in large organizations with an established business model) and high openness people tend to leftist political opinions.

What makes you think your hiring manager isn't already doing that based on their interaction with you and your looks? Even simply subconsciously?

The point is this system would perform better than them. Maybe we will need to learn how to lie to robots?

On the other hand their mental coin flip is going to be documented nowhere, whereas the use of ML in their decision could be traceable and they could get sued for it.

You haven't already? I thought we had plenty of practice most teenagers do so until turn eighteen, many answer recruiting personality surveys with what they think the employer wants, etc.

Heck one of the middle school career day quiz suggestions recommended looking at what is listed with and without the plan on going to college option check.

I would like to see more comparisons against the best humans at a task

> This isn't a matter of "recognize that old white people are conservative", because people will do that already

I think your giving too much credit to humans, and ignoring the fact that most people would lose a lot of point due to a bias towards expectation that people who are attractive or look well off or happy would share their own political beliefs.

Presumably some humans are terrible at this and others are as good or better than the machine. Of course, even someone who was very good (say 80% accurate) would be wrong about 1 person in 5.

Being honest about this equips a person with a useful hunch capability that will provide a long-term edge (perhaps as a detective, or in sales, or any of many other contexts where people-reading can help); less honest practitioners might become con artists, or consultants/coaches whose methods are not reproducible or even formalized such as Dave Grossman: https://www.insider.com/bulletproof-dave-grossman-police-tra...

> I think the key line is how much better this system is than humans attempting the same task:

My key issue is: why does that matter, humans should not be doing it in the first place, why do we need a machine that's even better at it?

This should be impressive considering that humans are very good at picking other human faces.

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