Airbnb Claims Its AI Can Predict Whether Guests Are Psychopaths (futurism.com) 133
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Futurism: To protect its hosts, Airbnb is now using an AI-powered tool to scan the internet for clues that a guest might not be a reliable customer. According to patent documents reviewed by the Evening Standard, the tool takes into account everything from a user's criminal record to their social media posts to rate their likelihood of exhibiting "untrustworthy" traits -- including narcissism, Machiavellianism, and even psychopathy. The background check tool is the work of Trooly, a startup Airbnb acquired in 2017. When the Evening Standard asked Airbnb to comment on the extent to which it uses Trooly's tool, it declined. However, Airbnb's website does note the company's use of AI to rate potential guests: "Every Airbnb reservation is scored for risk before it's confirmed. We use predictive analytics and machine learning to instantly evaluate hundreds of signals that help us flag and investigate suspicious activity before it happens."
I doubt it (Score:3)
It works only for the morons who use their real names on "the Internet", and I doubt that psychopaths do that. :-)
I certainly do not.
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Or they same email address for their social media account. Or if they linked their internet name to their real name some other way, e.g. by correlating their posts with AirBNB bookings.
Anyway it's a lawsuit waiting to happen.
It's really about the price you get offered (Score:2)
They really are analyzing the price you will pay based on how rich you are, how much of chump you are, and how expensive you like to travel.
So for people who do use their real name, they are either chumps, or think their name adds to their status (either rich or people who like to behave rich). Those folks will pay more.
How biased is it? (Score:2)
Anyway it's a lawsuit waiting to happen.
Wonder how racist the algorithm is.
If it's basically saying "you're part of these minority communities; and those minority communities have a higher crime rate", it may statistically "work".
But it probably won't be fair or legal.
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Most sociopaths, which is a more clinical term, are not nefarious superviliains spending their cunning on outwitting Airbnb and credit card companies. Why would they spend time and energy generating fraudulent accounts, driver's licenses, passports, etc. for day-to-day travel?
Re: I doubt it (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: I doubt it (Score:5, Funny)
I think the concern is whether they will organize a giant party and totally trash the property they are "staying" in.
$isArBnBSociopath := ($age .LT. 30) && ($isMale) && ($isFancyProperty) && ($rentalPeriod .LE. 2 nights)
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Sorry, sir - that's patented. Report for reprogramming.
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Actually haven't had as much trouble with that group as the 40-something woman with the four amazingly badly behaved children who torched everything in our yard while she sat in the house and drank.
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I think the concern is whether they will organize a giant party and totally trash the property they are "staying" in.
Do sociopaths have enough friends to have a giant party?
I run an Airbnb and "someone trashing the place" is actually not much of a concern. First, it is rare. Second, even a few thousand dollars in damages is affordable as a cost of doing business.
A MUCH bigger concern is unfair reviews. A single bad review can drop my rating, move me way down the Airbnb display list, and cost me far more in lost revenue than any "house party".
So who leaves unfair reviews? In my experience, the worst are French people.
Re: I doubt it (Score:2)
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It is a myth that gang members are sociopaths.
Most of them join gangs to have a sense of belonging and companionship.
A study of prison inmates [discovermagazine.com] found that gang members were the least likely to display psychopathic traits.
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According to many articles, leaders are quite often sociopaths.
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Sociopaths can group themselves together to form "gangs".
Sociopaths can be engaging and entreating.
The American workplace is full of them (and their cousins: narcissists & psychopaths).
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For their victims, Socipaths ARE nefarious supervillians.
Try one and you'll agree!
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In fact, I know several personally. The difference is between "manipulative supervillain" and "unhindered by morals".
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Movie psychopaths, or psychopathy, the illness? (Score:5, Interesting)
Real-life psychopathy is just another mental illness. The people who have it, are mostly normal people.
Their "bug" is, that empathy doesn't come natural to them. They have to specifically enable it beforehand. Which, as you might guess, is usually not an option, since doing that all the time is incredibly tiresome, and you usually only notice when it's way too late.
They usually compensated, starting at an early age, with merely acting it using rational thinking and trained patterns (a telltale sign) instead of instinct. Which if you are smart, and care, means constant stress of failing to be realistic.
And that is the key: Just because they can't tell, doesn't mean they don't care if they are dicks to you. It's no easy for them either.
So they are obviously tempted to go the easy route. Which, if they go all the way, can lead to the psychopaths depicted in movies... But please can we stop stigmatizing those people in general?
Source: By brother is very likely one. He's a good guy. Even with the harm his misguided attempts sometimes cause. It isn't his intention. As is proven with how great care he takes with correcting the wrongs he caused, and trying to change himself.
TL;DR: It's not easy, being green.
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Have to agree, my fiancé's mother is a social worker and she loses her shit if someone misuses the term "psychopath". This is straight-up discrimination, and I could use the same argument of "protect our customers" to ban autistic people based on their meltdowns, black people based on crime rates, or Indian immigrants based on public defecation issues, all of which would land me in court.
My guess is that they aren't so much interested in determining a person's mental illness or race as much as determining their risk profile. The problem is that race, psychopathy, and other traits affect a person's risk profile and a poorly understood or evolved algorithm will pick up on attributes like skin color that have nothing to do with actual risk. I recently tried to use one of those sites that lets you sell unused gift cards. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of trying to sell all the gift cards
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and other traits affect a person's risk profile and a poorly understood or evolved algorithm will pick up on attributes like skin color that have nothing to do with actual risk.
Keep dreaming buttercup. Black landlords prefer to rent to whites because they know better.
For the group as a whole, skin color is probably correlated with risk as is income level and a whole host of other things but it's correlation
and averages not actual cause and effect. Those same landlords would likely prefer a black person with a good rental history than a
white person with a crappy rental history. The issue is that by using algorithms or stereotypes then a person is negatively affected if they
happen to be in the wrong group by no fault of their own. Certain choices of cars or even car co
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How is it "discrimination" if you are excluding someone based on what that particular individual has personally done in their own lifetime?
Because that is not how the system works. It doesn't just look at "bad behavior", but also look for correlations between bad behavior and traits that may seem innocuous.
For instance, typing in all caps or all lowercase on social media is correlated with loan defaults. But a high probability of loan default is also correlated with having a lot of social media "friends" that use a single-case. So it is not only what you do, but also who you know and socialize with.
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same category as discrimination against race?
Discrimination on the basis of race in accommodaton is illegal.
Discrimination on the basis of poor grammar, nose rings, credit history, is not.
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Because the system presumably doesn't just monitor undesired behavior.
It also monitors for harmless behavior that is correlated.
For example: blacks are most likely to be criminals, so if you want less criminals, ban blacks. And I suppose it is true and it works. However, it is unfair, most blacks aren't criminals and don't deserve that treatment, that's why we have anti-discrimination laws.
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Except that this isn't trying to keep out blacks or any other particular race. It's trying to exclude psychopaths. The only way that one would generally get slapped with that label in the first place is by the actions that one personally takes, not what any of their ancestors may have done or by any other factor where illegal discrimination might otherwise apply.
So my opening question still stands.
Re: Movie psychopaths, or psychopathy, the illness (Score:2)
It is detecting psychopathy by analyzing your facebook posts, language, inflection, possibly even your friend list. Itâ(TM)s not something you did but an attribute of your personality like autism or depression. Yeah, certain mental conditions might make you higher risk but so does age, race, and gender. Iâ(TM)m not sure we should go down the road of discriminating based on psychological profiles.
Re:Movie psychopaths, or psychopathy, the illness? (Score:4, Interesting)
The flip side is, of course, people simply lacking empathy should not be stigmatized as being psychopaths.
Re:Movie psychopaths, or psychopathy, the illness? (Score:4, Interesting)
You seem to misunderstand what antisocial personality disorder is. You see, lack of emotional empathy is a trait of several other personality disorders (schizoid, schizotypal, narcissistic) and also of autism spectrum disorders (which neurological, not personality). The difference between them and psychopaths is that psychopaths will go out of their way to hurt others if it amuses them and aren't bound by any feelings at all.
So if your brother is supposed to be a good guy and apparently does some attempts to do good, it is highly unlikely that he is a psychopath. It should be diagnosed by a professional anyway.
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You seem to misunderstand what antisocial personality disorder is. You see, lack of emotional empathy is a trait of several other personality disorders (schizoid, schizotypal, narcissistic) and also of autism spectrum disorders (which neurological, not personality).
For people on the autism spectrum it manifests differently though. It's not that they have no empathy, if an autistic person is made to realize that they hurt someone's feelings they will feel quite bad about it; they are often quite sensitive in that respect. The problem is that they have difficulty picking up on social and emotional cues that most people learn naturally at a very young age and so don't realize they're doing anything wrong until there's a blowout.
With narcissistic personality disorder s
Re: Movie psychopaths, or psychopathy, the illness (Score:2)
It manifests differently in every disorder. Schizoids, for example, usually don't care much about others, but unlike narcissists they don't care about themselves either and won't bother hurting others as long as there are other alternatives.
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Sorry, but no. Part of the clinical definition of a psychopath is the lack of remorse (other than when it backfires and the psychopath feels sorry, but only because he gets to feel the negative impact of being a psychopath). Your brother is no psychopath if he feels actual remorse and his attempt to make amends is not rooted in him trying to avoid negative impact for himself.
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So if the only reason one is following a particular pattern of behavior is because they are trying to avoid negative impact of doing otherwise means they have some sort of mental illness?
I'm pretty sure that the reason a whole lot of people get up at the same time each morning and go to work is just so that they won't get fired..
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So if the only reason one is following a particular pattern of behavior is because they are trying to avoid negative impact of doing otherwise means they have some sort of mental illness?
The OP didn't say say that people who try to avoid getting in trouble are psychopaths. He said that psychopaths only feel sorry when their psychopathic behavior gets them in trouble. So if the guy that only gets up in the morning to go to work to avoid being fired also feels bad if he runs over someone's dog on the way to work, he's not a psychopath. Get it?
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It is entirely possible for a psychopath to "feel bad" not for the person, but because they screwed up and risk their reputation, job, or relationships.
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There, fixed it for you....
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There's more to it than that. It's defined by a list of traits that tend to go together, with lack of empathy being just one of them. See this article [psychologytoday.com] for a discussion of the full definition.
Re:I doubt it (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, it'll probably mark you as "no data" which will be adjacent to psychopath in the renter hierarchy. That's what they do for credit scores already.
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Mr. 007, your identity is not as hidden as you might expect, and that maneuver with the cards at the table was ridiculous. You are Bond, James Bond. Calling yourself "nospam" does not disguise you. I will send large tuna to eat your face, because sharks are in short supply... so take fifteen minutes to get away with my beautiful assistant.
No, no, it's gratis. Try not to shoot me too much. I understand we have protocols but, that kind've smarts. Plus, you know you need me to make any sense out of your absurd
Translation: (Score:5, Insightful)
"We wanted to find patterns that correlate with our (probably ridiculously bad) definition of psychopaths, but we don't know what those patterns are, so we trained an universal function, to give all input that we can a get some weights, to calculate what we believe matches those patterns that we don't actually know exactly (otherwise we could just have coded an algorithm ourselves), but might be something almost entirely different too ... no idea ... ... But let's run with it anyway, BECAUSE OMG AI!"
Funny, given that by the ICD10 definition, people who try to solve social problems this way, correlate with the definition of "psychopath/sociopath" quite well! :)
Re:Translation: (Score:4, Insightful)
"Funny, given that by the ICD10 definition, people who try to solve social problems this way, correlate with the definition of "psychopath/sociopath" quite well! :)"
It takes one to know one.
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or electing a 'murkin president.
Or any other level of politician - politics selects for psychopaths (and others of the "dark triad").
The parties do, too. But they select for different KINDS of psychopath.
Rs run to rule-bound compensated psychopaths. You can get along with them and work with them just fine - as long as you avoid doing anything that makes you a "bad guy" in their ruleset. Then look out!
Ds run to uncompensated: Opportunists, pathological liars, anything goes. "Politics is the art of the p
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Merry and Pippin basically stand around while Boromir faces down the Uruk-hai cavalry single-handed.
But once Boromir falls things change fast. Merry and Pippin apply a conservative Hobbit-like standard to assess whether Boromir has actually fallen: he fails to slay a fourth Uruk-hai to avenge hav
Re:Translation: (Score:4, Insightful)
This is my great fear of AI. It's the fact that gullible people believe that an AI told them something is the Correct Policy, they will give it much more credence even those of us who work with these models know damn well they are *not* universal AI you still have to understand the problem domain space -- and the training data! -- to design a network that even remotely Does What You Want.
Instead the Guys in Control will tell the masses that they are fucked unless they do what the AIs say. It will just be like religion all over again.
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This leads me to a conflict (Score:2)
How should I advertise my room trasher blog without tipping off potential customers?
They said I was paranoid 20 years ago (Score:5, Insightful)
Yesterday the fucking DHS, today AirBnB (and potential employers, and head-hunters too - I know that for a fact), tomorrow health insurance companies... They'll all determine your worth to be or do something based on your (in)ability to shut your trap online, or post reassuring bromide to avoid raising suspicion.
Me, I decided to maintain strict radio silence online - at least for whatever can be traceable to my real persona - 20 years ago, after a incident almost destroyed my reputation and my ability to find work. And that was pre-Google! I'd hate to imagine what it would be like if it happened to me now. Now the internet has almost forgotten about me, and boy am I glad it did.
All the people I know told me I was paranoid. Well, guess who's laughing more and more often now. Although if I'm honest, the way the world is rapdily going 1984 is no laughing matter: it's beyond sad and pretty scary...
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They'll all determine your worth to be or do something based on your (in)ability to shut your trap online, or post reassuring bromide to avoid raising suspicion.
There will be a service to automate bromide posting for your social media.
Me, I decided to maintain strict radio silence online - at least for whatever can be traceable to my real persona - 20 years ago
Same here, only for slightly different reasons. However, just as with credit score - lack of any score would be treated as negative score. So start posting bromides already.
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Never tell me the odds (Score:4, Funny)
After a few miles, the hitcher asks the driver, "Aren't you afraid that I might be a serial killer?"
The driver chuckled and replied, "What are the odds of two serial killers being in the same car?"
Re:Never tell me the odds (Score:5, Funny)
That's why I always have a bomb with me when flying. Statistically it's near impossible that two bombs are on the same plane, and since I won't detonate mine, I increase the safety of the plane.
But try to argue statistics with one of the mouthbreathers from the DHS...
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Three people watch an empty building. Two people walk into the empty building and a few minutes later three people leave the building.
Biologist: "You have witnessed procreation."
Statistician: "On average 2.5 people move through the entrance"
Mathematician: "If one person enters the building now, it would be empty."
Look at what we have lost ... (Score:5, Interesting)
The well regulated hotel industry can not do this. These uber clones can. The hotel industry can not survive the price being undercut by these fly-by-night operators, people who don't have compliance costs, people who don't have to practice fair trade.
By the time we realize the disadvantages of these unregulatable service providers in hotels, taxis and other industries, it would be too late.
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For those who lack imagination.
I can think of one fictional reference that's already very well done (and disturbing)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
And one real world one that is being implemented
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
On the contrary (Score:3)
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The well regulated hotel industry can not do this.
Sure they can. And they'd likely get the same regulatory pushback that these Uber clones are going to get, now that these sorts of practices are coming to light. Facebook has already been slapped multiple times for their unlawful advertising practices with regards to the Fair Housing Act (e.g. allowing people to (not) target ads based on protected traits such as race or age or religion), so it's not like technology companies are getting a free pass on this stuff.
The only difference here is that the hotel in
Social credit (Score:2)
Is it worse having a global social credit system run by one potentially abusive central authority, but one entity to deal with, or having thousands of entirely separate privatized ones?
And what hellish dystopia are we now in where we have ANY social credit systems at all???
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This is a social function that's been missing since people started living in communities larger than a village. Face it, credit scores and criminal records are not sufficient. When everyone in the community knew everyone else you had actual protection. I loaned my horse to Al, he starved, beat and overworked it, and I got back a wreck. No one in the community is ever going to loan Al another horse. Where is the equivalent today? Even when cities started to grow they were organized into tightly-knit ne
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No, we need a method by which we may judge other people's reliability when their language and culture and background and expectations may be entirely different than our own.
Privatised Social Credit System (Score:5, Insightful)
This sounds just like a privatised version of China's Social Credit System [wikipedia.org]. I'm not sure which I find more scary.
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There's enough history of private systems using violence to enforce their system as well as private systems co-opting the government to enforce their system.
Pinkertons used to have more employees privately using violence then the US army had recruits. Labour violence in the late 19th century. Places like the Congo when it was a private fiefdom.
moronity report (Score:2, Insightful)
Another reason not to use AirBnB (Score:2)
Airbnb Claims Its AI Can Predict Whether Guests Are Psychopaths
So, what I hear you saying is...if I use AirBnB, its AI has the potential to falsely flag me as a psychopath? And this could be weighed as a credible allegation by the police, or my employer, or by the federal government?
All the more reason for me to not use AirBnB.
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Sounds like libel doesn't it, especially if they put it in print and share the results?
Burning my future ability to rent (Score:2)
That's great, but... (Score:2)
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That's what customer reviews are for. Read them, some are incredibly scathing. On the other hand, all of ours are glowing.
How many psychopaths to train the AI? (Score:2)
You typically need thousands of cases to train an AI. Did they send psychopath to random houses in order to train the AI?
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Well, all they needed to do was to analyze corporate executives and the members of Congress.
China social score system (Score:2)
The world was outraged when China started using software to rate the "trustworthiness" of its citizens to create a social score. This is really the same thing and is just as bad as an idea as the basis for judging a person is not yet proven using AI.
For example this comment will be used against me in the ROC and AirBNB.
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Analyzing a comment like that would be too much work. On the other hand, if you post the drunken kegger that you threw with your buddies on your Farcebook page that trashed someone's house it's a pretty good indicator that neither you nor your buds are likely to treat future rentals with respect.
Easy (Score:2)
IsPsychpath = True
End If
Why do people still use social media? (Score:2)
Nothing good comes from it.
Sounds like (Score:2)
Quite a few commenters here are worried about something... AirBnB is a private business and it can refuse service to anyone it chooses. If people weren't complete slobs or animals when renting a place this wouldn't be an issue. Like when the Tsunami hit Japan back in 2011. The Japanese don't even have a word for looting. They had rows of wallets lined up for people to claim. That would last for all of 10 seconds in the USA. There's too many crazy people and its not getting better.
Airbnb Claims Its AI Can Predict ... (Score:2)
And here it is:
10 Print "Input Name:"
20 Input A
30 Print "Yes."
40 GOTO 10
Goddamit, /. predicted that I'm a ... (Score:2)
... sociopath and those sorry ass motherfæ-Yéáå$@ Á1x5,]–m AE @ NÁÕE”Ît&ÿÚ_á$@ @ LdpA5;m%æ-Y+vû(*\?êqõÆíL0xØ_&4aoE—v@ @ =pA5+uXG0ý£ðêäøÿÿÿ|ÿ:ñRTñsp DHP@ è`P£SBP-ügcêßMn
Lawsuit field day (Score:2)
Can you imagine when the algorithm ends up producing racially biased results due to possibly biased training data?
What if the AI is wrong? (Score:2)
Airbnb would have to show there's no bias regarding gender fluidity, religion, race, and a host of other descriptors.
"Sociopath" has a legal definition and is not a crime in itself.
I'd be tickled to view exhibits found in discovery on behalf of the defendant. "Where, precisely, did all of the data come from?"
You can fry me for an oyster if you think Airbnb is going to go crude on d ata gathering. They are going to by the data from the big box stores like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.
Cambridge A
What about Psycho Hosts? (Score:3)
There is at least one case of a guest being raped and murdered by a host. Why then does AirBnb assume only the hosts need protection?
And we had our own run-in with a psycho host - not nearly as serious as rape and murder - but disconcerting enough to make me delete my account and swear off AirBnb because we found host bias - the resolution process was completely slanted in favor of the host in the end making things unsafe for the guests.
Our "hosts" monitored us on a nest cam without our consent or knowledge. When they made a comment which revealed information they could only know by monitoring us we found the cam and simply turned it away so they could not watch everything we did. After we left this resulted in literally mad ranting comments from the host on my profile, and an attempt to extort $250 worth of bogus damages for supposedly damaging their cam which they claim they replaced, which was outside the unit. We drove 8 hours back up to take pictures of it and proved it had not been replaced, and AirBnb found in our favor. We entered all of these as established facts in our review of our host, and AirBnb DELETED OUR HONEST, TRUE AND FAIR review because it violated their policy which was: we were not allowed to mention any actual resolution to the the "problems" we had been accused of.
These were paranoid, aggressive hosts who in writing blamed us for things we didn't do, attempted extortion when we thwarted their paranoid monitoring, and the hosts reviews were allowed to remain, and our rebuttal was deleted by AirBnb.
These problems go both ways, and I won't be using AirBnb again.
Dear AirBNB (Score:2)
Litigation (Score:2)
Can't wait for people to be tagged and sue the pants off of em.
A.I. = high tech astrology. (Score:2)
A. I.:
1. Collect a lot of data and label it with what it's data about.
2. Feed chunks of it to an algorithm that generates sub-algorithms that look for correlations and give you outputs that match the labels - tuning them up / selecting subsets that seem to perform well..
3. Try the result on other chunks and see if it produces plausible results.
4. Rinse and repeat until you have something that looks good on your dataset.
5. Sell it as a powerful predictive/classifying
questions (Score:2)
Does it work on co-workers? Bosses? Potential girlfriends? Or for those of us who're not sure if they or the rest of the world... yourself?
It's the same as the Chinese system... (Score:2)
Your social media "score" is used to determine your fitness to do business with... Gotta love capitalism!
Experience the dystopia of tomorrow... today! (Score:2)
You're going to be visiting a city, so you try to book a room. When you click "Book Now", the website tells you that you've been rejected. No explanation. You phone the customer service number. Wait on hold half an hour. Finally get a human who tells you they can't do business with you because their computer has marked you as "untrustworthy". The representative has no idea why. They can't tell you what information that was based on. No, there's no way to appeal. Have a nice day.
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Once upon a time, my parents used to find the house suspiciously clean after those weekends.
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Do you know how gross long hairs can be? I only rent to bald people!
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I just don't want the drunk woman with the four incredibly poorly behaved teenagers that trashed our place to ever have the chance to do it to anyone else. The little bastards actually posted their attempts to cut down a couple of our trees on their Instagram feeds.
Discriminating against people with X race as well (Score:2)
Discriminating against people with X race as well
or maybe pro X voters.
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I'd rather have a prospective future wife book an air-bnb room to see what I'll be getting into.