A team of Russian researchers has developed an artificial neural network capable of guessing character traits from photographs. Interestingly, the algorithm is better for women than for men. The authors intend to offer technology to dating sites, training video producers and customer services.
Since ancient times, physiognomists have tried to link a person's appearance to his character, but most of their ideas did not withstand rigorous scientific scrutiny. Studies in which participants are asked to “rate” someone's personality from a photograph usually always give very mixed results. Why should it make a difference with a selfie?
However, there are several theories (indeed questionable for me) on the fact that the characteristics essential to communication can be determined by carefully studying the face of the interlocutor. The results of the most recent neurobiological studies show that, instead of paying attention to individual characteristics, the brain processes face images entirely and on a holistic basis.
Tell me what selfie you take and I'll tell you who you are
Scientists from HSE and the Open University of Humanities and Economics, together with the Russian-British startup BestFitMe, developed a group of neural networks to make reliable predictions about the nature of photographs of faces. The effectiveness of the AI thus trained proved to be superior to that of the average person and even that of similar machine learning systems. The ability to "guess" a person's character from their photo was 58%, not 50% as up to now.
After studying 31.000 selfies, the neural network was able to evaluate five parameters: honesty, nervousness, extroversion, conformity and openness. Honesty is the parameter that the AI read better than others. And the conclusions drawn from studying women's photographs turned out to be more accurate than assessments of men's faces.
The method can become a support for the evaluation of candidates in situations where speed is needed or it is necessary to manage a large volume of photos. The technology can be used by recruiting agencies, dating sites and applications.
A little personal tip, however: Sociability, sensitivity or resourcefulness can also be determined in a simpler way. For example, monitoring information about the smartphone owner's movements based on accelerometer readings and finding out how often he checks messages.
The research was published here.
