Marginalium

AI personality extraction from faces:

we extract the Big 5 personality traits from facial images of 96,000 MBA graduates, and demonstrate that this novel “Photo Big 5” predicts school rank, com- pensation, job seniority, industry choice, job transitions, and career advancement. Us- ing administrative records from top-tier MBA programs, we find that the Photo Big 5 exhibits only modest correlations with cognitive measures like GPA and standardized test scores, yet offers comparable incremental predictive power for labor outcomes.

Given that personality traits (including the Big 5) aren’t really thought to predict performance very well, I wonder why this ‘photo big 5’ does? Is it something about the quality of the photo? I’m going to have to actually read this article.