starry – facereadings

Kyle McDonald – Appropriating New Technologies

“What we discovered is that that expression alone is sufficient to create marked changes in the autonomic nervous system” (Paul Ekman)

I thought this was interesting because it seems like human emotion is usually dictated by some internal mechanism within the brain and being able to induce emotion purely based on physical motions was not something I’d considered before.

Nabil Hassein – Against Black Inclusion in Facial Recognition

“Machine learning researchers have even reinvented the racist pseudoscience of physiognomy, in a study claiming to identify criminals with approximately 90% accuracy based on their faces alone — using data provided by police.”

I thought the arguments the author discussed were very interesting, the quote above reminded me about how important it is to understand the societal impact of any piece of technology especially when it can perpetuate racist ideas and not simply focus on innovation or technical mastery.