A new study by scientists at the University of Pennsylvania examines whether artificial intelligence can identify reliable candidates by analyzing facial features.
A new study by scientists at the University of Pennsylvania examines whether artificial intelligence can identify reliable candidates by analyzing facial features.
Scientists believe that AI can accurately predict important characteristics of people based on the analysis of their faces, including indicators related to financial success, such as respect and trust. This is reported by Futurism.
To do this, the researchers used an artificial intelligence system trained on previous research on facial personality traits to identify five personality traits: the soft skills of openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. The study also drew on photos of 96,000 MBA graduates collected from LinkedIn.
Researchers have examined the real-life careers of LinkedIn users and say they have found a link between the traits they identified from facial scans and their success in the job market. They say this means that machine learning methods can detect correlations between facial features and real-life success.
Futurism notes that an algorithm that can influence whether a person gets a job, a bank loan, or rents a car based solely on their face sounds dystopian. But in a world where financial success takes precedence over everything else, corporations would have a «strong incentive» to implement it.
Various versions of this algorithm are already being used in the real world. Some states in the US are using AI-based software to verify driver’s licenses, which has negative consequences for people with facial differences.
«The widespread adoption of facial recognition technology in the future may encourage people to alter their features using software or even change their appearance through cosmetic procedures,» the researchers write.
