Responses to Critiques on Machine Learning of Criminality Perceptions (Addendum of arXiv:1611.04135)
This is an incremental response to public and media backlash, focusing on clarifying research intent in a controversial domain.
The authors address critiques of their prior work on inferring criminality from face images, emphasizing that their research was intended solely for academic discussion and expressing surprise at media misinterpretation.
In November 2016 we submitted to arXiv our paper "Automated Inference on Criminality Using Face Images". It generated a great deal of discussions in the Internet and some media outlets. Our work is only intended for pure academic discussions; how it has become a media consumption is a total surprise to us. Although in agreement with our critics on the need and importance of policing AI research for the general good of the society, we are deeply baffled by the ways some of them mispresented our work, in particular the motive and objective of our research.