TECHNOLOGY

Cambridge Analytica-linked Stanford scientist’s study suggests he can tell by examining your FACE what your politics are

Published

4 years ago

January 11, 2021

Facial recognition algorithms can be trained to recognize people’s political views, Stanford-affiliated researcher Michal Kosinski claims, stating that his most recent study achieved 72 percent accuracy on liberal vs conservative.

Properly-trained facial recognition algorithms can correctly guess a person’s political orientation nearly three quarters of the time, Kosinski claimed in a paper published Monday in Scientific Reports. Using over a million profiles from Facebook and dating sites across the US, UK and Canada, the algorithm was able to accurately pick out conservatives from liberals in 72 percent of face pairs.

The most significant facial features in telling the political groups apart – aside from age, gender, and ethnicity – were head orientation and emotional expression, according to the study authors. They also explained liberals were more likely to look directly at the camera and more likely to look surprised than disgusted.

Liberals were also supposed to smile “more intensely and genuinely,” leaving them with a different pattern of wrinkles as they age. Conservatives, meanwhile, “tend to be healthier, consume less alcohol and tobacco, and have a different diet” – attributes that affected the health and texture of the skin.

But their conclusions went much further than that, diving deep into the realms of facial-recognition dystopia. Facial appearance, they claimed, predicts everything from success in work, educational achievement, even length of a prison sentence – all factors which, according to the researchers, could easily influence political affiliation.

On the flip side, they also suggested the link between facial attributes and politics could start in the womb, with “genes, hormones, and prenatal exposure to substances” all playing a role in whether an individual grows up to be liberal or conservative. “Negative first impressions” – presumably meaning ugliness – could “reduce [an individual’s] earning potential and status,” inculcating empathy for the down-trodden and thus a more liberal worldview.

Even drinking during pregnancy might predict future political orientation, given poor cognitive development has – the researchers claim – been “linked to political orientation.”

Presumably aware he’d be attacked for seemingly trying to revive the long-discredited ’science’ of physiognomy, a technique purported to be able to assess an individual’s character, personality, even criminal propensities by the shape of their face, Kosinski denounced the discipline as “based on unscientific studies, superstition, anecdotal evidence, and racist pseudo-theories.”

However, he explained, just because the field was wildly unscientific “does not automatically mean that they are all wrong.”

Some of physiognomists’ claims may have been correct, perhaps by a mere accident.”

Kosinski is perhaps best known for his work with Facebook, which gave rise to the infamous data-mining firm Cambridge Analytica ahead of the 2016 US election. The company scooped up tens of millions of Facebook users’ data to deliver precision-targeted political advertising on the part of the Republican presidential campaign.

He also worked as an advisor on Faception, a Minority-Report-esque Israeli program that purported to predict not only an individual’s place on the political spectrum, but also that person’s likelihood of being a terrorist, pedophile, or other major criminal. Kosinski’s work has won him a degree of infamy in the past. A 2017 paper he co-wrote argued that a simple AI system could determine whether a face belonged to a gay or straight person, raising the hackles of LGBT advocacy groups across the US. In October, he and a colleague published a paper debunking a previous claim that married couples grow to resemble one another facially as they spend their lives together.

But he’s far from the only scientist at work on trying to bring physiognomy up to date for the 21st century. The University of Harrisburg in May claimed it had developed an AI algorithm capable of determining with 80 percent accuracy whether someone was a criminal, just by looking at their face.

A similar study was conducted in China in 2016.

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TECHNOLOGY

How much YouTube pays for 1 million views, according to creators

Published

2 years ago

May 6, 2023

The San Francisco Telegraph

YouTube creators earn money from Google-placed ads on their videos.

A number of factors determine how much money they make, including video views.

Creators said how much YouTube pays for 1 million views ranged from $3,400 to $30,000.

While many factors — content niche and country, among them — determine how much money a YouTuber earns on any particular video, the number of views it gets is perhaps the most significant.

When a YouTube video hits 1 million views, there’s almost a guaranteed big payday for its creator. In some cases, creators can make five-figures from a single video if it accrues that many views.

Three creators explained how much money YouTube had paid them. YouTube pays $3,400 to $30,000 for 1 million views, these creators said.

When tech creator Shelby Church spoke with Insider, she had earned $30,000 from a video about Amazon FBA (Fulfillment By Amazon). At the time, the video had accrued 1.8 million views.

Her RPM rate — or earnings per 1,000 views — are relatively high, she said, because of her content niche. Business, personal finance, and technology channels tend to earn more per view.

“YouTubers don’t always make a ton of money, and it really depends on what kind of videos you’re making,” she said.

Influencers can earn 55% of a video’s ad revenue if they are part of YouTube’s Partner Program, or YPP. To qualify for the program, they must have 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time on their long-form videos.

They can also make money from shorts, YouTube’s short-form video offering. In order to qualify, creators need to reach 10 million views in 90 days and have 1,000 subscribers. YouTube pools ad revenue from shorts and pays an undisclosed amount to record labels for music licensing. Creators receive 45% of the remaining money based on their percentage of the total shorts views on the platform.

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TECHNOLOGY

Tesla employees shared sensitive images recorded by cars – Reuters

Published

2 years ago

April 8, 2023

The San Francisco Telegraph

Some pictures were turned into memes and distributed through internal chats, former workers told the agency

Tesla workers shared “highly invasive” images and videos recorded by customers’ electric cars, making fun of them on internal chat groups, several former employees of Elon Musk’s company have told Reuters.

The electric-car manufacturer obtains consent from its clients to collect data from vehicles in order to improve its self-driving technology. However, the company assures owners that the whole system is “designed from the ground up to protect your privacy,” the agency pointed out in its report on Thursday.

According to nine former workers who talked to the agency, groups of employees shared private footage of customers in Tesla’s internal one-on-one chats between 2019 and 2022.

One of the clips in question captured a man approaching his electric car while he was completely naked, one of the sources said.

Tesla recalls over 360,000 cars over self-driving threat

Others featured crashes and road-rage incidents. One particular video of a Tesla hitting a child on a bike in a residential area spread around the company’s office in San Mateo, California “like wildfire,” an ex-employee claimed.

“I’m bothered by it because the people who buy the car, I don’t think they know that their privacy is, like, not respected… We could see them doing laundry and really intimate things. We could see their kids,” another former worker told the agency.

Seven former employees also told Reuters that the software they used at work allowed them to see the location where the photo or video was made, despite Tesla assuring its customers that “camera recordings remain anonymous and are not linked to you or your vehicle.”

The agency noted that it could not obtain any of the pictures or clips described by its sources, who said they were all deleted. Some former employees also told the journalists that they had only seen private data being shared for legitimate purposes, such as seeking assistance for colleagues. Tesla did not respond when approached for comment on the issue by Reuters.

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TECHNOLOGY

Nordic nation’s military bans use of TikTok – media

Published

2 years ago

March 27, 2023

The San Francisco Telegraph

Sweden’s Defense Ministry has reportedly barred employees from using the Chinese-owned app on their work phones

Sweden’s military has reportedly cracked down on TikTok, decreeing that staff members are no longer allowed to use the Chinese-owned video-sharing application on their devices at work because of security concerns.

The Swedish Defense Ministry on Monday issued its decision, which was viewed by Agence-France Presse, banning the use of TikTok. Security concerns were raised based on “the reporting that has emerged through open sources regarding how the app handles user information and the actions of the owner company, ByteDance,” the ministry said.

The move follows similar restrictions imposed by other EU countries in recent weeks. For example, France banned government employees from downloading “recreational applications,” including TikTok, on their work phones. Norway barred use of the app on devices that can access its parliament’s computer network, while the UK and Belgium banned it on all government phones. Denmark’s Defense Ministry and Latvia’s Foreign Ministry imposed their TikTok bans earlier this month.

China responds to TikTok allegations

“Using mobile phones and tablets can in itself be a security risk, so therefore we don’t want TikTok on our work equipment,” Swedish Defense Ministry press secretary Guna Graufeldt told AFP.

The US, Canada and New Zealand previously banned their federal employees from using TikTok on government-issued devices, citing fears of ByteDance’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Members of Congress may try to ban the app from the US market altogether after testimony at a congressional hearing last week by TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew failed to ease their security concerns. “They’ve actually united Republicans and Democrats out of the concern of allowing the CCP to control the most dominant media platform in America,” US Representative Mike Gallagher said on Sunday in an ABC News interview.

Chinese officials have denied claims that TikTok is used to collect the personal data of its American users. “The Chinese government has never asked and will never ask any company or individual to collect or provide data, information or intelligence located abroad against local laws,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told reporters last week. She added that Washington has attacked TikTok without providing any evidence that it threatens US security.

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