Company claims its technology can pick out criminals by facial analysis
Experts are skeptical of a start-up company’s claims that its technology can identify terrorists and other criminals by analyzing clues in their faces.
The company, Faception, says its software detects character traits with 80 percent accuracy, the Washington Post reports. “Our personality is determined by our DNA and reflected in our face,” Faception chief executive Shai Gilboa told the Post. “It’s a kind of signal.”
According to Faception, its technology can identify everything from geniuses to pedophiles to white-collar criminals. And its ability to identify terrorists has led to a contract with a homeland security agency, the company says. SnapMunk describes the technology here.
Experts interviewed by the Post questioned the company’s claims. Princeton psychology professor Alexander Todorov has done research on facial perception, and he says evidence of accuracy in facial reading “is extremely weak.”
Another expert, University of Washington computer science professor Pedro Domingos, told the Post that artificial intelligence software may appear to be making accurate predictions, when in reality it is relying on the wrong data.
He gave an example of an experiment in which a colleague trained a computer system to recognize the difference between wolves and dogs with almost 100 percent accuracy. The software, it turned out, was recognizing that all the wolf photos had snow in the background, while the dog photos did not. Similarly, face-reading software could be making an assessment based on traits such as the presence of a beard, he said.
“If somebody came to me and said ‘I have a company that’s going to try to do this,’ my answer to them would be ‘Nah, go do something more promising,’ ” Domingos told the Post. “But on the other hand, machine learning brings us lots of surprises every day.”
