The Dark Past of Algorithms That Associate Appearance and Criminality
By Catherine Stinson,
American Scientist
| 01. 01. 2021
“Phrenology” has an old-fashioned ring to it. It sounds like it belongs in a history book, filed somewhere between bloodletting and velocipedes. We’d like to think that judging people’s worth based on the size and shape of their skulls is a practice that’s well behind us. However, phrenology is once again rearing its lumpy head, this time under the guise of technology.
In recent years, machine-learning algorithms have seen an explosion of uses, legitimate and shady. Several recent applications promise governments and private companies the power to glean all sorts of information from people’s appearances. Researchers from Stanford University built a “gaydar” algorithm that they say can tell straight and gay faces apart more accurately than people can. The researchers indicated that their motivation was to expose a potential privacy threat, but they also declared their results as consistent with the “prenatal hormone theory” that hypothesizes that fetal exposure to androgens helps determine sexual orientation; the researchers cite the much-contested claim that these hormone exposures would also result in gender-atypical faces.
Several startups claim to be able to use artificial intelligence... see more
Related Articles
By Gwen D’Arcangelis, Guest Contributor
| 01.07.2021
Photo by Adrian Lange on Unsplash
Living under the COVID-19 pandemic has justifiably created fear and uncertainty about germs and their evolving contagiousness and lethality. Against the backdrop of the natural evolution of the coronavirus and emerging new strains, many ruminate over further alarming scenarios—from questions about the coronavirus’s possible lab origins, to worry over the possibility of biohackers engineering new pandemic germs. New gene editing technologies like CRISPR make these scenarios all the more frightening, as they...
Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay
The last year was extraordinary. It challenged, touched, and changed all of us at the Center for Genetics and Society. The CGS team adapted and reacted to the circumstances, while maintaining focus on our goal of working to ensure an equitable future where human genetic and reproductive technologies benefit the common good.
Here are some highlights of CGS’s 2020 activities.
Heritable Genome Editing
The Geneva Statement
At the end of January, Trends...
If you ask the wrong question, you will certainly get the wrong answer. Likewise, if your questions are confusing or misleading, you may get answers that don’t make sense. In the worst of all worlds, the answers, right or wrong, can be misinterpreted to say something they clearly don’t.
The Pew survey of global attitudes to biotechnology research published on December 10 asks the wrong questions in a confusing way. This is significant, in itself and even more because all...
By Emily Mullin, Future Human | 12.07.2020
China has reportedly conducted tests on members of its armed forces in hopes of developing soldiers with “biologically enhanced capabilities,” according to John Ratcliffe, the United States’ top intelligence official.
“China poses the greatest threat to America today,” warned Ratcliffe,...