Faception: New app to identify everyone from pedophiles to terrorists

'We understand the human much better than other humans understand each other.'

A new app just signed a contract with a homeland security agency to help identify national threats to security - but is it accurate?

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Faception is a new facial recognition app that can identify everyone from terrorists to poker players by facial recognition tech alone.

Faception's chief executive, Shai Gilboa, explained: "We understand the human much better than other humans understand each other. Our personality is determined by our DNA and reflected in our face. It's a kind of signal."

The app's website claims it is the "first-to-technology and first-to-market with proprietary computer vision and machine learning technology for profiling people and revealing their personality based only on their facial image."

If you think this sounds a lot like Minority Report, you're right.

Critics of the app, such as Pedro Domingos, a professor of computer science at the University of Washington and author of "The Master Algorithm" asked: "Can I predict that you're an ax murderer by looking at your face and therefore should I arrest you? You can see how this would be controversial."

Gilboa, who is also the company's chief ethics officer, claimed the classifiers to predict negative traits would be available to the public and believes it can do more good than bad.

The Faception website explains how personalities are affected by genes and how faces reflect a person's DNA. It also describes how new the tech is and how little is known about the role of genes, DNA and the penchant for violence.

What, for example, would the computer program learn from a man with a beard or a woman whose hair falls across her face? Would scarring, physical abnormalities or a change of style negatively affect the app's ability to process faces?

Alexandar Todorov, a Princeton psychology professor who has experience in facial perception research told The Washington Post: "The evidence that there is accuracy in these judgments is extremely weak. Just when we thought that physiognomy ended 100 years ago. Oh, well."

Domingos added: "If somebody came to me and said 'I have a company that's going to try to do this,' my answer to them would be 'nah, go do something more promising.' But on the other hand, machine learning brings us lots of surprises every day."

Will the future of national security rely on apps such as Faception? Can scientists discover enough about facial expressions and the human genome to reveal who is more likely to pose a problem than others? Only time will tell.

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