GLAAD and the Human Rights Campaign on Friday condemned a new study from two Stanford University researchers that concluded artificial intelligence can determine if someone is gay with startling accuracy.
Read about the study HERE.
Wrote the groups in a press release:
GLAAD, the world’s largest LGBTQ media advocacy organization, and the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ civil rights organization, today called on Stanford University and responsible media outlets to expose dangerous and flawed research that could cause harm to LGBTQ people around the world. A professor affiliated with Stanford University has published a research study that resulted in several media outlets wrongfully suggesting that artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to detect sexual orientation. Further, GLAAD and HRC today urged all media who either covered the study or plan to in future coverage to include the myriad flaws in the study’s methodology — including that it made inaccurate assumptions, categorically left out any non-white subjects, has not been peer reviewed, and many other issues enumerated below.
Said Jim Halloran, GLAAD’s Chief Digital Officer:
“Technology cannot identify someone’s sexual orientation. What their technology can recognize is a pattern that found a small subset of out white gay and lesbian people on dating sites who look similar. Those two findings should not be conflated. This research isn’t science or news, but it’s a description of beauty standards on dating sites that ignores huge segments of the LGBTQ community, including people of color, transgender people, older individuals, and other LGBTQ people who don’t want to post photos on dating sites.”
Said HRC Director of Public Education and Research Ashland Johnson:
“This is dangerously bad information that will likely be taken out of context, is based on flawed assumptions, and threatens the safety and privacy of LGBTQ and non-LGBTQ people alike. Imagine for a moment the potential consequences if this flawed research were used to support a brutal regime’s efforts to identify and/or persecute people they believed to be gay. Stanford should distance itself from such junk science rather than lending its name and credibility to research that is dangerously flawed and leaves the world — and this case, millions of people’s lives — worse and less safe than before.”
