The Economist on using phrenology for hiring and lending decisions: "Some might argue that face-based analysis is more meritocratic" […] "For people without access to credit, that could be a blessing"

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• Brutticus@midwest.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Why stop there? Why just banks and hiring firms? why not allow access to Law Enforcement and use the phrenology robot to screen for pre crime?

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  • ivanafterall@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Why not just use phrenology on babies and get rid of the problematic ones right from the start?

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• psycotica0@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  "Imagine appearing for a job interview and, without saying a single word, being told that you are not getting the role because your face didn’t fit. You would assume discrimination, and might even contemplate litigation. But what if bias was not the reason?

  Uh… guys…

  Discrimination: the act, practice, or an instance of unfairly treating a person or group differently from other people or groups on a class or categorical basis

  Prejudice: an adverse opinion or leaning formed without just grounds or before sufficient knowledge

  Bias: to give a settled and often prejudiced outlook to

  Judging someone’s ability without knowing them, based solely on their appearance, is, like, kinda the definition of bias, discrimination, and prejudice. I think their stupid angle is “it’s not unfair because what if this time it really worked though!” 😅

  I know this is the point, but there’s no way this could possibly end up with anything other than a lazily written, comically clichéd, Sci Fi future where there’s an underclass of like “class gammas” who have gamma face, and then the betas that blah blah. Whereas the alphas are the most perfect ughhhhh. It’s not even a huge leap; it’s fucking inevitable. That’s the outcome of this.

  I should watch Gattaca again…

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  • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I think their stupid angle is “it’s not unfair because what if this time it really worked though!”

    I think their angle is “its not unfair because the computer says it!”. automated bias. offloading liability to an AI.

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  • morriscox@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    People see me in cargo pants, polo shirt, a smartphone in my shirt pocket, and sometimes tech stuff in my (cargo) pants pockets and they assume that I am good at computers. I have an IT background and have been on the Internet since March of 1993 so they are correct. I call it the tech support uniform. However, people could dress similarly to try to fool people.

    People will find ways, maybe makeup and prosthetics or AI modifications, to try to fool this system. Maybe they will learn to fake emotions. This system is a tool, not a solution.

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    • HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Yeah, but is it useful to rob the Mona Lisa?

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    • MalReynolds@slrpnk.net ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Goodhart’s law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure”

      TLDR as soon as you have a system like this people will game it…

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  • Tattorack@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Like every corporate entity, they’re trying to redefine what those words mean. See, it’s not “insufficient knowledge” if they’re using an AI powered facial recognition program to get an objective prediction, right? Right?

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    • JackbyDev@programming.dev ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      The most generous thing I can think is that facial structure is not a protected class in the US so it’s technically okay to descriminate against.

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• pelespirit@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Everyone is kind of focusing on the hiring part, which is incredibly nazi already, but they’re saying for lending too. Fucking yikes.

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  • pdxfed@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    How revolutionary. They’re going to upend the world of finance by trying to give loans to people who can’t structurally afford to pay them back in all likelihood? Isn’t that the entire playbook for wage slaves to those who are otherwise of sound mind and body?

    Maybe they try to just continue with the current (awful)status quo without the psuedoscience? Course then they’d lose out on the fascism.

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• xyguy@startrek.website ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Measles, theocratic government, phrenology: everything old is new again.

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• technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  It’s completely normal for fascists to promote pseudo-science.

  Indeed their publication is named after one of the worst pseudo-sciences.

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• Boppel@feddit.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  “okay, okay, hear me out: what if nazi methods, but for getting a job. we could even tattoo their number on their arms. it’s only consequent, we already devide by skin colour”

  WTF

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• LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Disturbing. What is the proposed mechanism here? Or is it unknown?

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  • AmbitiousProcess@piefed.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    They just use the buzzword “AI”, but in reality it’s probably going to be a machine learning algorithm.

    Take the dataset, split out the groups of people you do/don’t want to hire based on whatever criteria, train the model to be more likely to pick faces with characteristics from the “do hire” group, and less likely to pick those from the “don’t hire” group.

    Then, use it on real people, and it will provide similar outcomes based on faces.

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    • LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      What I meant was, what is the mechanism that supposedly connects facial features to job performance?

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• Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  The Economist is generally a pretty good news source, but I thought this article was subpar.

  Irrespective of whether this facial evaluation algorithm works or not, as things stand today, it is pointless to discuss its use in the context of meritocracy. A regime founded upon the rejection of personal responsibility, corruption and criminality makes such discussions irrelevant (algorithm or no algorithm).

  At the risk of sounding like an accelerationist, I can’t get rid of the feeling that the regime members are really busy doing their best to make a new metaphorical rope.

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  • technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The Economist is generally a pretty good news source,

    Gotta be drinking the pseudo-science sauce to believe this.

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    • Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Literally promoting phrenology.

      That’s why I said this article was subpar. And I even commented on this in pretty harsh terms:

      the regime members are really busy doing their best to make a new metaphorical rope

      I don’t agree with a lot of what they say, but I don’t believe they are malicious, at least to the extent that many American news sources are.

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    • Maeve@kbin.earth ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Plus the post filled with buzzwords that superficially sound smart strung together in a way that say nothing of value.

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• JustJack23@slrpnk.net ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  How long before they start measuring skulls at job interviews

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  • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    This is for skin tone and gender, not the insides.

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• oce@jlai.lu ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I looked for the original article, abstract:

  Human capital—encompassing cognitive skills and personality traits—is critical for labor market success, yet the personality component remains difficult to measure at scale. Leveraging advances in artificial intelligence and comprehensive LinkedIn data, we extract the Big 5 personality traits from facial images of 96,000 MBA graduates, and demonstrate that this novel" Photo Big 5" predicts school rank, compensation, job seniority, industry choice, job transitions, and career advancement. Using administrative records from top-tier MBA programs, we find that the Photo Big 5 exhibits only modest correlations with cognitive measures like GPA and standardized test scores, yet offers comparable incremental predictive power for labor outcomes. Unlike traditional survey-based personality measures, the Photo Big 5 is readily accessible and potentially less susceptible to manipulation, making it suitable for wide adoption in academic research and hiring processes. However, its use in labor market screening raises ethical concerns regarding statistical discrimination and individual autonomy.

  The PDF is downloadable here: scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citatio…

  I don’t have the time nor the expertise to read everything to understand how they take into account the bias that good looking white men with educated parents are way more likely to succeed at life.

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  • loonsun@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Hi, Organizational Psychologist here who works in a lab alongside my personality Psych research supervisor. I have never heard of this method, never read this in any of the literature, and am genuinely disgusted anyone got ethics approval to run this study. The only way we use ML to evaluate personality is using natural language due to the tenants of the lexical hypothesis. I have never seen anyone attempt to create a big five measure from facial recognition nor have I ever heard of any theoretical models for personality based on faces…except for phrenology

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  • usualsuspect191@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I’m wondering if things like FAS (which can have certain facial characteristics) are muddling the results as well.

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  • Maeve@kbin.earth ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    How many times has Big 5 been debunked yet employers still like it for reasons?

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  • cypherpunks@lemmy.ml ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    one can also get the full paper directly from yale here without needing to solve a google captcha:

    …yale.edu/…/AI Personality Extraction from Faces …

    I don’t have the time nor the expertise to read everything to understand how they take into account the bias that good looking white men with educated parents are way more likely to succeed at life.

    i admittedly did not read the entire 61 pages but i read enough to answer this:

    spoiler

    they don’t

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    • underisk@lemmy.ml ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Lmao they source the photos from LinkedIn profiles. I’m sure that didn’t bias their training at all. Yes sir there’s no chance this thing is selecting for anything but facial features.

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• gian@lemmy.grys.it ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Last time did not end well for about 6 million people…

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• umbraroze@piefed.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Boeing CEO: “We’re always innovating, and sometimes we need to boldly embrace the wisdom of the past if it can be re-examined in light of current technology. From now on, our airplane navigation systems will be based on the Flat Earth model. This makes navigation so much more computationally efficient, guys.”

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  • Reverendender@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    So, the US Supreme Court model then.

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• ViatorOmnium@piefed.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Does it predict people that allegedly finished university not knowing the difference between correlation and causality?

  This reminds me of a fraud risk classification model I once heard about, which ended up being an excellent income-by-postal-code classifier.

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  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    It predicts people with business school degrees getting six, seven, and eight figure salaries to blow smoke up the asses of the investor pool.

    This reminds me of a fraud risk classification model I once heard about, which ended up being an excellent income-by-postal-code classifier.

    The dark art of sociology is recognizing how poverty impacts human behaviors and then calibrating your business to profit off it.

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    • pdxfed@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Sociology is one of the few majors that Florida is trying to cut from public school programs. They apparently think it radicalizes people to educate them about the way the world works.

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• AbidanYre@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Not April fool’s or the onion? What the fuck?

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  • tourist@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The Economist has a tendency to put out articles seemingly designed to make conservatives bust nuts through their trousers at mach 4

    Is Lucifer’s Poison Ivy destroying the fabric of civilization as we know it?

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• cabbage@piefed.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Whatever it takes to keep hiring mediocre white men, I guess.

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  • ivanafterall@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Sooooo much evil stems from the well-warranted insecurity of mediocre white men. You gotta be secure in your mediocrity, fellas.

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    • cabbage@piefed.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Oh yeah. This is not an attack on mediocre white men—I’m one of them. We just have to learn to get over ourselves.

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• 6nk06@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  What if being a nazi was meritocratic? How about no?

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  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    It’s been the bedrock of American business since at least the 1960s.

    Our country is flush with very wealthy fascists, many of whom obtained the position thanks to their ancestors crawling across the ratlines and embedding themselves in the nascent tech sector.

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    • Maeve@kbin.earth ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Since the fifties? Since founding, and IDC if it was a word or Hitler had risen yet. The concept was baked into the Constitution with "free white landowner men."

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• AdamEatsAss@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Plastic surgery would become more popular. $10k work done to my nose to double my salary? Yes please.

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  • Ancalagon@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Also another way to get everyone to scan their face. Tie their employment to it.

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  • cypherpunks@lemmy.ml ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Plastic surgery would become more popular.

    One of the paper’s authors had the same thought:

    “Suppose this type of technology gets used in labor market screening, or maybe dating markets,” Shue muses. “Going forward, you could imagine a reaction in which people then start modifying their pictures to look a certain way. Or they could modify their actual faces through cosmetic procedures.”‌

    She also bizarrely claims

    “we are very much not advocating that this technology be used by firms as part of their hiring process.”

    and yet, for some reason:

    The next step for Shue and her colleagues is to explore whether certain personality types are drawn to specific industries or whether those personality types are more likely to succeed within given industries.

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    • CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I just saw that tinder is testinf ai to match profiles.

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• bismuthbob@sopuli.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Wow. If a black box analysis of arbitrary facial characteristics is more meritocratic than the status quo, that speaks volumes about the nightmare hellscape shitshow of policy and procedure that resides behind the current set of ‘metrics’ being used.

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  • ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Because HR is already using “phrenology”.

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  • AcidiclyBasicGlitch@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Spoken like somebody with the sloping brow of a common criminal.

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    • scratchee@feddit.uk ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I really must commend you for overcoming your natural murderous inclinations and managing to become a useful member of society despite the depression in your front lobe. Keep resisting those dark temptations!

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  • technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    A primary application of “AI” is providing blackboxes that enable the extremely privileged to wield arbitrary control with impunity.

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  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The gamification of hiring is largely a result of businesses de-institutionalizing Human Resources. If you were hired on at a company like Exxon or IBM in the 1980s, there was an enormous professionalized team dedicated to sourcing prospective hires, vetting them, and negotiating their employment.

    Now, we’ve automated so much of the process and gutted so much of the actual professionalized vetting and onboarding that its a total crap shoot as to whom you’re getting. Applicants aren’t trying to impress a recruiter, they’re just aiming to win the keyword search lottery. Businesses aren’t looking to cultivate talent long term, just fill contract positions at below-contractor rates.

    So we get an influx of pseudo-science to substitute for what had been a real sociological science of hiring. People promising quick and easy answers to complex and difficult questions, on the premise that they can accelerate the churn of staff without driving up cost of doing business.

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    • bismuthbob@sopuli.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Gotcha. This is replacing one nonsense black box with a different one, then. That makes a depressing kind of sense. No evidence needed, either!

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  • bismuthbob@sopuli.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    All of that being typed, I’m aware that the ‘If’ in my initial response is doing the same amount of heavy lifting as the ‘Some might argue’ in the article. Barring the revelation of some truly extraordinary evidence, I don’t accept the premise.

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