Sketchy facial recognition studies and government intelligence - next stage for Russia and Cambridge

[suffragette]

Analytical (whatever their new name is) and Trump campaign?

There’s an article today about Kosinski claiming that he can use facial recognition technology to identify sexual orientation and political ideology/affiliation. His claims are controversial, but Russian Intelligence was interested enough to fly him over for a presentation.

Kosinski is one of the scientists whose previous research was scooped up by Cambridge Analytica and used to manipulate voters in the Presidential election.

At the least, it looks like some kind of manipulation incorporating facial recognition tech might be on the horizon. At worst, imagine this technology and research ‘results’ being used to target people, based on their perceived orientation, politics, etc.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/07/artificial-intelligence-can-tell-your-sexuality-politics-surveillance-paul-lewis

Vladimir Putin was not in attendance, but his loyal lieutenants were. On 14 July last year, the Russian prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, and several members of his cabinet convened in an office building on the outskirts of Moscow. On to the stage stepped a boyish-looking psychologist, Michal Kosinski, who had been flown from the city centre by helicopter to share his research. “There was Lavrov, in the first row,” he recalls several months later, referring to Russia’s foreign minister. “You know, a guy who starts wars and takes over countries.” Kosinski, a 36-year-old assistant professor of organisational behaviour at Stanford University, was flattered that the Russian cabinet would gather to listen to him talk. “Those guys strike me as one of the most competent and well-informed groups,” he tells me. “They did their homework. They read my stuff.”

Kosinski’s “stuff” includes groundbreaking research into technology, mass persuasion and artificial intelligence (AI) – research that inspired the creation of the political consultancy Cambridge Analytica. Five years ago, while a graduate student at Cambridge University, he showed how even benign activity on Facebook could reveal personality traits – a discovery that was later exploited by the data-analytics firm that helped put Donald Trump in the White House.

That would be enough to make Kosinski interesting to the Russian cabinet. But his audience would also have been intrigued by his work on the use of AI to detect psychological traits. Weeks after his trip to Moscow, Kosinski published a controversial paper in which he showed how face-analysing algorithms could distinguish between photographs of gay and straight people. As well as sexuality, he believes this technology could be used to detect emotions, IQ and even a predisposition to commit certain crimes. Kosinski has also used algorithms to distinguish between the faces of Republicans and Democrats, in an unpublished experiment he says was successful – although he admits the results can change “depending on whether I include beards or not”.

~~~
In one of our final conversations, Kosinski tells me he shouldn’t have talked about his visit to Moscow, because his hosts asked him not to. It would not be “elegant” to mention it in the Guardian, he says, and besides, “it is an irrelevant fact”. I point out that he already left a fairly big clue on Facebook, where he posted an image of himself onboard a helicopter with the caption: “Taking off to give a talk for Prime Minister Medvedev.” He later changed his privacy settings: the photo was no longer public, but for “friends only”.

[kcr]

1. This is scary. The article starts off almost legitimizing it as science when it is utter garbage.

Kosinski is a kook and his research methods are extremely flawed. Here's a snippet of his bizarre outlook:

“I don’t believe in guilt, because I don’t believe in free will,” Kosinski tells me, explaining that a person’s thoughts and behaviour “are fully biological, because they originate in the biological computer that you have in your head”. On another occasion he tells me, “If you basically accept that we’re just computers, then computers are not guilty of crime. Computers can malfunction. But then you shouldn’t blame them for it.” The professor adds: “Very much like: you don’t, generally, blame dogs for misbehaving.”

[suffragette]

2. I find it scary, too. Flawed research methods and sketchy ethics. Combine that with gov't interest

from Russia and Israel (and who knows who else) and Kosinski’s coy answers about questions about that interest.

[kcr]

3. Yep. Thanks for posting.

The more exposure the better.

[sdfernando]

4. Someone that doesn't believe in guilt

Is someone that has or will do things one should be guilty of.

Serial rapist/murderer? Not their fault it is a biological malfunction.

This guy could become the new J. Mengele.

[suffragette]

6. I think what he really doesn't believe in is responsibility. And yes, that makes him dangerous.

[backtoblue]

5. I believe Cambridge Analytica is now Emerdata Limited

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerdata

Founded by CA employees.

[suffragette]

7. Thanks. It's so important to keep track of the new fronts.