[ctoth]

I am a little curious why the title of this submission, "Automated Inference on Criminality using Face Images" was altered to the current, which is "Automatic Racial Discrimination via Artificial Intelligence" Especially when the abstract of the paper explicitly mentions "...using facial images of 1856 real persons controlled for race, gender, age and facial expressions..." This seems to be needless politicization of the topic, designed specifically to suppress discussion. Unfortunate as this topic seems rather interesting, and the finding that criminals and noncriminals divide so easily into distinct, detectable groups would be interesting to discuss here.

[alejohausner]

I kind of sympathize with the author's snarky change of title, but I would have used "class prejudice" rather than "racial discrimination". The paper reminds me of Victorian "research" showing that criminals have differently shaped crania from "normal" people.

Perhaps all they're detecting is that the criminal faces are mugshots, and the subjects are stressed and unhappy. They look upset. The noncriminals are all wearing a suit and tie, and look relaxed.

I am certain that the research is spurious.