this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2025
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The Economist on using phrenology for hiring and lending decisions: "Some might argue that face-based analysis is more meritocratic" […] "For people without access to credit, that could be a blessing" (lemmy.ml)
submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by cypherpunks@lemmy.ml to c/technology@lemmy.world
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/38830374

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economist article

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrenology

excerpts of economist article:

screenshot of text "Imagine appearing for a job interview and, without saying a single word, being told that you are not getting the role because your face didn’t fit. You would assume discrimination, and might even contemplate litigation.But what if bias was not the reason? What if your face gave genuinely useful clues about your probable performance at work? That question is at the heart of a recent research"

[...]

screenshot of text "a shorter one. Some might argue that face-based analysis is more meritocratic than processes which reward, say, educational attainment. Kelly Shue of the Yale School of Management, one of the new paper’s authors, says they are now looking at whether AI facial analysis can give lenders useful clues about a person’s propensity to repay loans. For people without access to credit, that could be a blessing."

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[–] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Disturbing. What is the proposed mechanism here? Or is it unknown?

[–] AmbitiousProcess@piefed.social 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

They just use the buzzword "AI", but in reality it's probably going to be a machine learning algorithm.

Take the dataset, split out the groups of people you do/don't want to hire based on whatever criteria, train the model to be more likely to pick faces with characteristics from the "do hire" group, and less likely to pick those from the "don't hire" group.

Then, use it on real people, and it will provide similar outcomes based on faces.

[–] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

What I meant was, what is the mechanism that supposedly connects facial features to job performance?

[–] AmbitiousProcess@piefed.social 2 points 3 days ago

the article says they're comparing it to their earnings and likelihood to switch jobs among other things.

Two things that are coincidentally lower (in terms of pay) and higher (in terms of propensity to switch jobs) for black people, rather than white people.