4 ms·

How soon before there's software that can "discover" who is gay, who is bi, who votes this way or that way, whose language is creditworthy, et al? I await the

How soon before there's software that can "discover" who is gay, who is bi, who votes this way or that way, whose language is creditworthy, et al? I await the day when all of this is discredited.

showerst 16y ago
It's a relatively simple question whether a certain trait can be 'ascertained' by these systems, and to what accuracy, in a given context. There are a number NLP programs that can detect a writers gender from text at a much greater accuracy than raw chance, especially in a limited domain. The problem is that the world is a big, messy domain. There's no reason in principal that other traits wouldn't be 'detectable' (although I doubt sexuality), but the problem is getting a good set of training/test data in context, and what your acceptable threshold for accuracy is. I'd be willing to bet that people whose text messages contain lots of U's and L8R's probably have worse credit than those who text in proper English, but there are much better ways of doing a credit check. If that's only accurate to, say, 100 FICA score points it's probably not worth using it. I wouldn't be too worried about big brother(s) using semantic analysis to read your mind, but don't discredit the fact that language patterns encode certain cultural information that is identifiable, or at least correlated with behavior.
- mikecane 16y ago
  >>>or at least correlated with behavior. Oh really? Briton Convicted for ‘Menacing’ Tweet Against Robin Hood Airport http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/10/briton-convicted-for-menacing-tweet-against-robin-hood-airport/ http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/10/briton-convicted...
- rada 16y ago
  I tested one of those programs once. I don't remember a 100% but the list of "women" writers that came up for me was something like, Linus Torvalds, Richard Dawkins, Steve Yegge, etc. I think I tested about a dozen male bloggers in total, and most of them came up female.
tokenadult 16y ago
How soon before there's software that can "discover" who is gay Do you mean this? http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/09/20/project_gaydar_an_mit_experiment_raises_new_questions_about_online_privacy/ http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/09/20/... http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/brainiac/2009/10/project_gaydar.html http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/brainiac/2009/10/pro... (I learned about this on Hacker News back when it was first reported.)
- mikecane 16y ago
  Yeah, I heard of that at the time but didn't want to go back and edit. The worst thing that can happen is the Context Trap: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_being_sane_in_insane_places http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_being_sane_in_insane_places 1) Humans want to look for X 2) Design software to look for X 3) Software finds X 4) Humans believe software but software is incorrect 5) X is screwed
samatman 16y ago
Google Ads seems to 'know' when I'm depressed, suggested marriage counseling when I was going through a divorce, and has otherwise done a pretty good job of scanning my email and suggesting links to me. This kind of analysis will never be perfect, but then, real humans aren't perfect at it either. I think we can predict that software will get better at this kind of 'guessing' over time. It's not half bad right now.

How soon before there's software that can "discover" who is gay, who is bi, who votes this way or that way, whose language is creditworthy, et al? I await the day when all of this is discredited.

showerst 16y ago

It's a relatively simple question whether a certain trait can be 'ascertained' by these systems, and to what accuracy, in a given context. There are a number NLP programs that can detect a writers gender from text at a much greater accuracy than raw chance, especially in a limited domain. The problem is that the world is a big, messy domain. There's no reason in principal that other traits wouldn't be 'detectable' (although I doubt sexuality), but the problem is getting a good set of training/test data in context, and what your acceptable threshold for accuracy is. I'd be willing to bet that people whose text messages contain lots of U's and L8R's probably have worse credit than those who text in proper English, but there are much better ways of doing a credit check. If that's only accurate to, say, 100 FICA score points it's probably not worth using it. I wouldn't be too worried about big brother(s) using semantic analysis to read your mind, but don't discredit the fact that language patterns encode certain cultural information that is identifiable, or at least correlated with behavior.

mikecane 16y ago
>>>or at least correlated with behavior. Oh really? Briton Convicted for ‘Menacing’ Tweet Against Robin Hood Airport http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/10/briton-convicted-for-menacing-tweet-against-robin-hood-airport/ http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/10/briton-convicted...
rada 16y ago
I tested one of those programs once. I don't remember a 100% but the list of "women" writers that came up for me was something like, Linus Torvalds, Richard Dawkins, Steve Yegge, etc. I think I tested about a dozen male bloggers in total, and most of them came up female.

tokenadult 16y ago

How soon before there's software that can "discover" who is gay Do you mean this? http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/09/20/project_gaydar_an_mit_experiment_raises_new_questions_about_online_privacy/ http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/09/20/... http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/brainiac/2009/10/project_gaydar.html http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/brainiac/2009/10/pro... (I learned about this on Hacker News back when it was first reported.)

mikecane 16y ago
Yeah, I heard of that at the time but didn't want to go back and edit. The worst thing that can happen is the Context Trap: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_being_sane_in_insane_places http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_being_sane_in_insane_places 1) Humans want to look for X 2) Design software to look for X 3) Software finds X 4) Humans believe software but software is incorrect 5) X is screwed

samatman 16y ago

Google Ads seems to 'know' when I'm depressed, suggested marriage counseling when I was going through a divorce, and has otherwise done a pretty good job of scanning my email and suggesting links to me. This kind of analysis will never be perfect, but then, real humans aren't perfect at it either. I think we can predict that software will get better at this kind of 'guessing' over time. It's not half bad right now.