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Comment by 2muchcoffeeman | Hacker News Reader

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2muchcoffeeman

I’ll just leave this here.

https://www.faception.com/

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It's impossible to tell if this is a joke, or YC '19. Exciting verticals!

i thought it was a joke/satire on AI and facial recognition tech. Now i can't tell either!

It could be it started out as a social satire ("faception", really?), but then someone send them an genuine inquiry about how many terrorists their system could catch for umptheen million dollars.

How many would resist the temptation to throw some code together, ship it, and pretend it's real? After all, who's going to argue with top-notch scientific facts like:

"Researchers previously knew that genetics played a large role in determining face shape, since identical twins share DNA."

Criminals and terrorist-sympathisers, that's who!

That is horrifying.

I don't suppose there'd be any way to know if companies are using this neo-phrenology during interviews?

https://www.faception.com/about-us

>...Our technology allows predictive screening solutions and enables Preventive Actions in the public safety, smart cities and homeland security...

That could never run into problems, whatsoever. /s

Sounds like the plot of Condor, the recent TV series, waiting to happen.

They claim to be able to recognize a terrorist. Seems more like an joke to me.

What they probably do (among other things) is racial profiling: brown person with beard -> bigger chances of being a terrorist, white person with hipster glasses -> less chances of being a terrorist.

Madness!

I guess with images of this sort, it might judge that the person could be dangerous, but just on the looks of your face alone, that is just stereotyping done as a [very suspect] business.

https://www.google.com/search?q=silence+of+the+lambs+hanniba...

Plenty of research suggests that the human brain already does this, and does so effectively, like it or not. But translating this into an algorithm is disturbing.

Of course it does - "I don't like the look of that guy". "Dodgy looking fellow". "He had an honest face". etc. The basic principle as a first-pass heuristic is tried and tested. Kneejerk reactions to this kind of tech always seem to completely ignore the question of whether it's actually effective.

I think people do realize that it’s codifying the “science” of “Ah reckon” and realize that same heuristic is famously terrible. Coding bias intentionally into an algorithm seems more like a thin justification for pre-existing profiling than any breakthrough in reading faces. It’s not hard to imagine the same behavior we seem today, but now with the excuse that “The algorithm did it.”

Cynically I suspect that may be the point. I refer to such things as bias laundering. There is a very long history of "objective" measures that were tailor made to collar hated groups.

Really we have enough problems with prejudices based on stupid gut feelings without adding in Garbage In Garbage Out from magical thinkers misusing machine learning.

I must dispute the effective part greatly. Sociopaths know how to play the system and there are many fooled by style over substance - who listen 99% to how it is said and ignore the content. I have found it shocking what complete bullshit people fall for that if repeated verbatim is incredibly stupid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

I'm curious if after they founded the company, and developed the technology, did they run their technology on their founders and employees to find out who is what - and perhaps got rid of people who were flagged.

This example didn't even come to my mind when writing the above comment. I think even run-of-the-mill applications of AI and ML such as feed "personalization" in Youtube, Twitter, and Facebook are pretty evil. They're clearly not optimizing for value for the user but for monetizability even if the user is being shown garbage content to get them addicted. I'm a deep learning researcher, and these applications make me seriously re-consider my choices and the impact I'm having in the world.

Is this for real? Or a satire like that "fake a vacation for instagram" kind of thing?

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