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The ability to control when and to whom to reveal one’s sexual orientation is crucial not only for one’s well-being, but also for one’s safety. We did not want to enable the very risks that we are warning against. We were really disturbed by these results and spent much time considering whether they should be made public at all. Most relevant are perhaps their remarks as to why the paper was released at all: In an extensive set of authors’ notes that anyone commenting on the topic ought to read, Michal Kosinski and Yilun Wang address a variety of objections and questions. And it demonstrates, as it is intended to, a class of threat to privacy that is entirely unique to the imminent era of ubiquitous computer vision.īefore discussing the system itself, it should be made clear that this research was by all indications done with good intentions. It relies on cues apparently more subtle than most can perceive - cues many would suggest do not exist. But the accuracy of the system reported in the paper seems to leave no room for mistake: this is not only possible, it has been achieved. In addition to exposing an already vulnerable population to a new form of systematized abuse, it strikes directly at the egalitarian notion that we can’t (and shouldn’t) judge a person by their appearance, nor guess at something as private as sexual orientation from something as simple as a snapshot or two. The research is as surprising as it is disconcerting. Today’s illustration of this fact is a new paper from Stanford researchers, who have created a machine learning system that they claim can tell from a few pictures whether a person is gay or straight. The machine was based on research by Frank Robert Wake, a Carleton University psychologist who died in 1993.We count on machine learning systems for everything from creating playlists to driving cars, but like any tool, they can be bent toward dangerous and unethical purposes, as well. The device was never able to establish a "discernable difference," between the biological responses of heterosexuals and LGBT individuals, Gentile wrote in her book. The machine was used by the federal government throughout the 1960s, until the Defence Research Board - which was later folded into the Department of National Defence - pulled funding in 1967. In one test, for example, subjects were shown pictures that would "arouse desire," said Gentile, while cameras took pictures of their pupils, to see if they dilated.
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The project "was a series of psychological tests," said Patrizia Gentile, an associate professor at Carleton University and the author of The Canadian War on Queers. The government feared they might be easy targets for Soviet spies who could blackmail them into giving up important secrets - and thus commissioned the machine to determine a person's sexual identity through involuntary biological responses.
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Gay and lesbian civil servants were driven out of the Canadian military and public service beginning in the 1950s, but the practice continued after homosexuality was removed from the Criminal Code in the 1960s.Īt the time, homosexuals were perceived by the government as weak, unreliable and potentially disloyal.