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Opinion: The ugliest side of facial recognition technology

The emergence of technologies that falsely promise to predict someone's behavior based on their facial features and expressions is a deeply troubling development.

Privacy

It's no mystery that big data presents a challenge toÌý.ÌýBut perhaps more alarming is the emergence of technology that combinesÌýfacial recognitionÌýand data analytics to create a powerful surveillance tool.

It's a disturbing development that combines theÌýmost worrisome aspects of algorithmic and big data technology with theÌýchilling and dangerous threats inherent in facial recognition.

´¡ÌýÌýis advertising its "predictive video" to anticipate behavior "based on the emotional state and personality style of any person in a video."ÌýIn Russia, the app FindFace gives users "the power to identify total strangers on the street,"Ìý

It's not just the tech fringe, either.ÌýGoogle'sÌýÌýhas a "smart reply" feature that apparently analyzes photos from contacts andÌýoffers​Ìýsuggested​ÌýresponsesÌýto them​.

But most troubling is theÌýIsraeli startup . It offers aÌýproduct that combines machine learning with facial recognition to "identify everything from great poker players to extroverts, pedophiles, geniuses, and white collar criminals." ´¡ÌýDepartment of Homeland Security contractor has hired the firm to "help identify terrorists."

That's a problem. The government should not use people's faces as a way of tagging them with life-altering labels. The technology isn't evenÌýaccurate.ÌýFaception’s for certain traits is a 20 percent error rate. Even if those optimistic numbers hold, that means for every 100 people, the best-case scenario is that 20 get wrongly branded as a terrorist.

And yet, according to the company,Ìýpowerful profiling is possible due to two alleged facts: personalities are "affected by genes" and our faces are a "reflection of our DNA."

The first premise doesn’t inspire confidence. It presumes nature affects our personalities more than nurture – a conclusion that experts constantly debate. For the sake of argument, though, let’s say this is true. Even then, we’re not dealing with a robust causal claim. Saying that personalities are "affected" by genes is a much weaker assertion than maintaining our genes determine them.

As to the face being a reflection of DNA, the folks at Faception admit that the evidence that supports that claim comes from animal studies, not psychological inquiry into human beings. Conveniently, they dismissÌýdifferences by accepting an unnamedÌý that "the human face was likely to develop in the same way."

These assumptions completely ignore many established psychological theories such as "situationism," which is whenÌýenvironmental features dispose all of us to behave in new ways – ways that can lead a person who habitually does good things to commit evil and atrocious acts.

Physical images certainly have some revelatory power. A snapshot of body language, for instance, can reveal confidence or nervousness.ÌýBut it would be serious mistake to view the face alone as a portal into deep character traits and future behavior.

Advocates of this kind of data analysis might argue that algorithms will get better as the data science advances and computers can make more decisions more quickly.ÌýBut Ìýare already plaguing big data.ÌýEconomist Ronald Coase famously years ago that if you torture the data long enough, it will confess anything.

But unfortunatelyÌýpeople tend toÌýplace far too much confidence in anything a computer spits out. This phenomenon known as Ìýlooms large with the implementation of predictive facial recognition technologies. A prime example of this was documented in a that exposedÌýracial bias embedded in predictive criminal risk assessments software.

Even if technology can guess correctly, do we really want to live in a society in which machines try to suss out deep truths based on our facial features? If that were the case, our "faceprints" would serve asÌýbeacons for unwanted attention, threatening ourÌýobscurityÌý–Ìýthe idea that when information about us is hard to find, it's safer. And you can't ditch the beacon unless you want to wear a maskÌýin public for the rest of your life.

Our faces are indeed exceptional. But predictive facial recognition technology and companies like FaceptionÌýexacerbate the most dangerous aspects of both big data and facial recognition.

Ìýis a professor of philosophy atÌý. Follow him on TwitterÌý.Ìý

ÌýisÌý​theÌý​​W. Stancil Starnes Professor of LawÌý​atÌý. Follow him on TwitterÌý.

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