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Comment by Joeboy | Hacker News Reader

I was not really prepared for being told how unattractive I am this morning.

I was a 6.3 as I stepped out of bed.

I took a shower, shaved, brushed my teeth, put on a nice shirt, fixed my hair and offered a good angle of my best smile at the camera. I was now a 9.

That's actually fairly similar to how humans would be influenced by showering, shaving, etc. so in some ways that's pretty impressive.

I'm also reasonably sure other factors also influence these algorithms. Hair style, framing, lighting, the clothes found on your shoulders, angle, distortion by the camera lens, and most importantly, similarity to high-scoring faces in the source data set.

I was a 6.3 but I felt pleasantly surprised because I personally think I'm a 1.5

I got a 4.8... the model also told me I lied about my age by nearly 20 years, so that's nice. I'm a very young looking ugly.

Same. It shaved 8 years off of me, and then called me ugly.

I’m wondering if this is scaled so 5 is quite low and 1-5 should be non-existent. Giving someone a 1 vs a “5” feels a little mean.

... I got a 5. When I smiled it bumped me up to 5.5

Fwiw, telling someone a 5 is a 1 is even meaner.

:-/

Hey, I was 5 myself, no need to take offense. We can be low self-esteem buddies.

My self-esteem is fine! A 5 is not bad : half of people are prettier than me, half are less pretty. But calling a "5" a "1" is a little mean, no? ;-) Don't really care.

Sorry to break it to you, but I'm pretty sure the wording on the site (which I don't have open anymore) suggested 5 was below the "normal" range, which presumably means it's well below the median. I'd be extremely happy to hear some more flattering interpretation.

Same. Their algorithm is broken.

Interesting! I thought it would be purely based on facial symmetry.

I took off my glasses and jumped 2.5 points. If it were measuring symmetry, that wouldn't happen.

To be blunt (like the AI is): glasses are a signal of a disability, similar to crutches, or neck braces

I took off my glasses and got barely any change. Most probably GP's glasses are very very ugly.

Bald guy here -- let me assure you, symmetry is not the only factor, not for the algorithm and not for the people it represents :)

Then you're missing the point the website makes about this and other algorithms like it being extremely unreliable. There are tons of biases in the training data, and not just ethnic/cultural ones mentioned. For starters, you're comparing a crappy webcam to a model that in all likelihood is based on people's best selfies.

The model tries to fit you into a very narrow niche. On top of that it will do so poorly.

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