The people working on this need to stop, sit down, and have a long, hard think about what they're doing. And about how ultimately this will be used to persecute and gill gay men.
Actually, their work seems to be focused on dispelling the common disbelief in these kind of applications for technology.
From the abstract: "Additionally, given that companies and governments are increasingly using computer vision algorithms to detect people’s intimate traits, our findings expose a threat to the privacy and safety of gay men and women."
Acknowledging that data analysis can create obstacles to freedom or serious social problems is a necessary step to preventing or addressing these issues, but public opinion is far from being there yet...
I doubt it will get so extreme as to kill gay men. However, they do need to sit down, and have a long hard think about why they are in school at Stanford, and to what end they want to direct their studies. If it's to create click-bait research papers with little to no value, they should question why they are in school in the first place.
Articles like this give the impression that the authors are internet hustlers, not proper grad students.
From the abstract: "Additionally, given that companies and governments are increasingly using computer vision algorithms to detect people’s intimate traits, our findings expose a threat to the privacy and safety of gay men and women."
Acknowledging that data analysis can create obstacles to freedom or serious social problems is a necessary step to preventing or addressing these issues, but public opinion is far from being there yet...