Has AI Gone Too Far? - Automated Inference of Criminality Using Face Images

Has AI gone too far? This might seem like a nonsensical question to data scientists who strive every day to expand the capabilities of AI until you read the headlines created by this just released peer reviewed scientific paper: Automated Inference on Criminality Using Face Images (Xiaolin Wu, McMaster Univ. That's right, shades of The Minority Report (movie in which criminals are arrested before the crime occurs) and the 19th century studies of phrenology. These researchers claim 89.51% accuracy in making this classification on several sets of unlabeled validation images, each of about 1,500 facial images. I hope this has really taken your breath away.