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People are complex. If some piece of code is used to predict my employability based on my facial expressions, there's not much to add. It's already as bad as it

People are complex. If some piece of code is used to predict my employability based on my facial expressions, there's not much to add. It's already as bad as it gets: you can't say/write anything non vanilla in public because 10 years later some HR snooping app will analyze the sentiment on the post and outright reject you. And we all kind of blindly walking into this no questions asked.

Solstinox 6y ago
The kind of people who make and buy these technologies say, “you just need more data/a better algorithm.” They don’t get that you could have 99.99999% of all possible information on a person AND that the missing 0.00001% could change everything you know about them.
Swizec 6y ago
> If some piece of code is used to predict my employability based on my facial expressions Funfact: when I first moved to USA I would practice emoting in the mirror so Americans could read my face and wouldn’t penalize me during interactions. Now people back home say I “grin like an american” > can’t say anything in public Ever noticed how Gen Z is switching back to private chatrooms and message groups? Public stuff is all polished and curated.
- joejerryronnie 6y ago
  Millennials just keep getting screwed - the generation that was born just in time to post every thought and action to the online public but also born to early to realize what a bad idea that was.
annoyingnoob 6y ago
At least the Chinese system is out in the open. Many private companies surveilling everyone without anyone's knowledge is terrible. Companies using these scores are really only targeting a group of people that allow the collection to happen. My car insurance company would sure love to put a tracker in my car but there is no way in hell that is going to happen. I'm sure my driving style would qualify me for higher rates, yet I've never caused an accident or made a claim where I was at fault.
- icedistilled 6y ago
  Yes they would, but the flip side of them not being able to price people based on actual driving behavior is by charging all men higher, all single people higher vs married people, and poor people higher based on credit score. Plus why single out insurance companies and ban them from creepily tracking you wherever you go and not all the other companies who do that with your cell phone. Also to be pedantic, the don't want to put trackers in the car, that is expensive. They want to use your cell phone like all the other apps tracking you, or they want the car manufactures to let them in on their data since most modern cars have the ability to track and broadcast location. >made a claim where I was at fault. That's a big caveat. There are plenty of accidents that are truly not one parties fault, but according to law even being judged as 49% at fault is still "not at fault". And even in cases of 0% at fault as determine by the insurance adjusters, theres a big chance one still had contributing factors. Also, there's a big chance not at fault claims will be taken into account when pricing you and raise your prices. Just right?? On the other hand, not at fault accidents do correlated with higher risk, and it's easy to see why. For example, people who get rear ended are not at fault. But following the car ahead too closely leads to needing to brake harder, increasing the chance of being rear ended. Following too closely also increases the chance of rear ending the vehicle in front.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - annoyingnoob 6y ago
    I was rear-ended in stop-and-go traffic. The same person was behind me for miles. He was looking at his phone and ran into me - totally and completely not my fault. He refused to give me his insurance info. I made a claim against my own insurance. I'm pretty sure the insurance company went after him and recovered costs. How exactly should that influence my rates? This is exactly why I pay for insurance, service I already pay for that is already factored into the costs. I pay extra for the zip code I live in already. I have no driving record and I've caused no accidents. If I put a tracking device in my car today my rates would go up because I accelerate quickly and brake hard when conditions allow. That is not right.
amoshi 6y ago
>And we all kind of blindly walking into this no questions asked. It's already happening, now, unfortunately. All your tweets (posted & liked) etc analyzed and flagged for bad language, drug/alcohol mentions, bigotry etc. and a report generated for HR. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22211363 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22211363 The company in question is used by Sterling and HireRight, so this isn't some unknown/niche company.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  Holy shit. The tweet thread under the link is well worth seeing. Taken from the company in question's site (https://fama.io/product/ https://fama.io/product/): > What Fama finds... > Our machine learning technology has flagged hundreds of thousands of instances of misogyny, bigotry, racism, violence and criminal behavior in publicly available online content. If you go and compare what the product actually seems to do - tracking down your Twitter account and grepping every Tweet you interacted with against a list of "thoughtcrime" words (like "hell" or "ass") - you can almost feel the next AI winter coming. How many more bullshit companies calling their fake, broken and trivial technology "AI" or "Machine Learning" will it take until the whole field of ML gets derailed by bad reputation? At least, (as much as I know history), the last AI winter involved companies trying but failing at AI. This time around, they're not even trying.
kebman 6y ago
I remember a party that was very interested in facial measurements. They used it to discriminate too. Why should corporations suddenly get away with this now?
- dcewcrrec 6y ago
  We've entered an awkward twilight zone where companies can do what they want a la Laissez-faire capitalism, which means they can also do exactly the same thing a government would do at exactly the same scale and with similar levels of authority. It is a grey area that hasn't yet been stopped by laws because sometimes companies are so big they influence the laws themselves.
  - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
    Everything you have said except for the last phrase “ sometimes companies are so big they influence the laws themselves“ is false. There are a fantastic amount of regulations in every western country today, many of which are applied arbitrarily or with enough discretion that they are essentially arbitrary. Even the most massive corporations market caps are dwarfed by the monthly spending of government. The only cases where corporations exert the powers if the state over detention and violence are occasions where they do so at the bidding of the state. It is true that some corporations are so big that they influence lawmakers just as ultra wealthy people always have. Indeed, if corporations were able to do the same things governments did and with the same authority, this process of influencing the government would be unnecessary.
    - Shared404 6y ago
      Just enough regulations to get the worst of unregulated and regulated capitalism, at least if my understanding is correct.
      - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
        yes, and whether this reflects poorly on capitalism, democracy, regulations, the corporate structure in a given country, the people in a given corporation, or the system as a whole depends to a large extent on your priors.
coding123 6y ago
Well, I wouldn't say it was blind. About every 2 years you'll find a movie about how insanely stupid it is to post info online. And those types of movies go back pretty far. The problem is how dense people are.

Solstinox 6y ago

The kind of people who make and buy these technologies say, “you just need more data/a better algorithm.” They don’t get that you could have 99.99999% of all possible information on a person AND that the missing 0.00001% could change everything you know about them.

Swizec 6y ago

> If some piece of code is used to predict my employability based on my facial expressions Funfact: when I first moved to USA I would practice emoting in the mirror so Americans could read my face and wouldn’t penalize me during interactions. Now people back home say I “grin like an american” > can’t say anything in public Ever noticed how Gen Z is switching back to private chatrooms and message groups? Public stuff is all polished and curated.

joejerryronnie 6y ago
Millennials just keep getting screwed - the generation that was born just in time to post every thought and action to the online public but also born to early to realize what a bad idea that was.

annoyingnoob 6y ago

At least the Chinese system is out in the open. Many private companies surveilling everyone without anyone's knowledge is terrible. Companies using these scores are really only targeting a group of people that allow the collection to happen. My car insurance company would sure love to put a tracker in my car but there is no way in hell that is going to happen. I'm sure my driving style would qualify me for higher rates, yet I've never caused an accident or made a claim where I was at fault.

icedistilled 6y ago
Yes they would, but the flip side of them not being able to price people based on actual driving behavior is by charging all men higher, all single people higher vs married people, and poor people higher based on credit score. Plus why single out insurance companies and ban them from creepily tracking you wherever you go and not all the other companies who do that with your cell phone. Also to be pedantic, the don't want to put trackers in the car, that is expensive. They want to use your cell phone like all the other apps tracking you, or they want the car manufactures to let them in on their data since most modern cars have the ability to track and broadcast location. >made a claim where I was at fault. That's a big caveat. There are plenty of accidents that are truly not one parties fault, but according to law even being judged as 49% at fault is still "not at fault". And even in cases of 0% at fault as determine by the insurance adjusters, theres a big chance one still had contributing factors. Also, there's a big chance not at fault claims will be taken into account when pricing you and raise your prices. Just right?? On the other hand, not at fault accidents do correlated with higher risk, and it's easy to see why. For example, people who get rear ended are not at fault. But following the car ahead too closely leads to needing to brake harder, increasing the chance of being rear ended. Following too closely also increases the chance of rear ending the vehicle in front.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- annoyingnoob 6y ago
  I was rear-ended in stop-and-go traffic. The same person was behind me for miles. He was looking at his phone and ran into me - totally and completely not my fault. He refused to give me his insurance info. I made a claim against my own insurance. I'm pretty sure the insurance company went after him and recovered costs. How exactly should that influence my rates? This is exactly why I pay for insurance, service I already pay for that is already factored into the costs. I pay extra for the zip code I live in already. I have no driving record and I've caused no accidents. If I put a tracking device in my car today my rates would go up because I accelerate quickly and brake hard when conditions allow. That is not right.

amoshi 6y ago

>And we all kind of blindly walking into this no questions asked. It's already happening, now, unfortunately. All your tweets (posted & liked) etc analyzed and flagged for bad language, drug/alcohol mentions, bigotry etc. and a report generated for HR. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22211363 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22211363 The company in question is used by Sterling and HireRight, so this isn't some unknown/niche company.

TeMPOraL 6y ago
Holy shit. The tweet thread under the link is well worth seeing. Taken from the company in question's site (https://fama.io/product/ https://fama.io/product/): > What Fama finds... > Our machine learning technology has flagged hundreds of thousands of instances of misogyny, bigotry, racism, violence and criminal behavior in publicly available online content. If you go and compare what the product actually seems to do - tracking down your Twitter account and grepping every Tweet you interacted with against a list of "thoughtcrime" words (like "hell" or "ass") - you can almost feel the next AI winter coming. How many more bullshit companies calling their fake, broken and trivial technology "AI" or "Machine Learning" will it take until the whole field of ML gets derailed by bad reputation? At least, (as much as I know history), the last AI winter involved companies trying but failing at AI. This time around, they're not even trying.

kebman 6y ago

I remember a party that was very interested in facial measurements. They used it to discriminate too. Why should corporations suddenly get away with this now?

dcewcrrec 6y ago
We've entered an awkward twilight zone where companies can do what they want a la Laissez-faire capitalism, which means they can also do exactly the same thing a government would do at exactly the same scale and with similar levels of authority. It is a grey area that hasn't yet been stopped by laws because sometimes companies are so big they influence the laws themselves.
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  Everything you have said except for the last phrase “ sometimes companies are so big they influence the laws themselves“ is false. There are a fantastic amount of regulations in every western country today, many of which are applied arbitrarily or with enough discretion that they are essentially arbitrary. Even the most massive corporations market caps are dwarfed by the monthly spending of government. The only cases where corporations exert the powers if the state over detention and violence are occasions where they do so at the bidding of the state. It is true that some corporations are so big that they influence lawmakers just as ultra wealthy people always have. Indeed, if corporations were able to do the same things governments did and with the same authority, this process of influencing the government would be unnecessary.
  - Shared404 6y ago
    Just enough regulations to get the worst of unregulated and regulated capitalism, at least if my understanding is correct.
    - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
      yes, and whether this reflects poorly on capitalism, democracy, regulations, the corporate structure in a given country, the people in a given corporation, or the system as a whole depends to a large extent on your priors.

coding123 6y ago

Well, I wouldn't say it was blind. About every 2 years you'll find a movie about how insanely stupid it is to post info online. And those types of movies go back pretty far. The problem is how dense people are.