Promising Future, Complex Past: Artificial Intelligence and the Legacy of Physiognomy

The idea of the body as a mirror of the soul has fascinated mankind throughout history. Being able to see through an individual, and drawing conclusions on their character solely based on a selection of external features, is the subject of physiognomy, and has a long tradition running well into recent times. However, the pre-modern, especially medieval background of this discipline has remained underexplored. The selected case studies in this volume each contribute to a better understanding of the history of physiognomy from antiquity to the Renaissance, and offer discussions on unedited treatises and on the application, development, and reception of this field of knowledge, as well as on visual sources inspired by physiognomic theory.

In situations ranging from border control to policing and welfare, governments are using automated facial recognition technology (FRT) to collect taxes, prevent crime, police cities and control immigration. FRT involves the processing of a person's facial image, usually for identification, categorisation or counting. This ambitious handbook brings together a diverse group of legal, computer, communications, and social and political science scholars to shed light on how FRT has been developed, used by public authorities, and regulated in different jurisdictions across five continents. Informed by their experiences working on FRT across the globe, chapter authors analyse the increasing deployment of FRT in public and private life. The collection argues for the passage of new laws, rules, frameworks, and approaches to prevent harms of FRT in the modern state and advances the debate on scrutiny of power and accountability of public authorities which use FRT. This book is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Artificial intelligence is part of our daily lives. How can we address its limitations and guide its use for the benefit of communities worldwide? Artificial intelligence (AI) has evolved from an experimental computer algorithm used by academic researchers to a commercially reliable method of sifting through large sets of data that detect patterns not readily apparent through more rudimentary search tools. As a result, AI-based programs are helping doctors make more informed decisions about patient care, city planners align roads and highways to reduce traffic congestion with better efficiency, and merchants scan financial transactions to quickly flag suspicious purchases. But as AI applications grow, concerns have increased, too, including worries about applications that amplify existing biases in business practices and about the safety of self-driving vehicles. In Can We Trust AI?, Dr. Rama Chellappa, a researcher and innovator with 40 years in the field, recounts the evolution of AI, its current uses, and how it will drive industries and shape lives in the future. Leading AI researchers, thought leaders, and entrepreneurs contribute their expertise as well on how AI works, what we can expect from it, and how it can be harnessed to make our lives not only safer and more convenient but also more equitable.

A face strikes us immediately as sad, and so, too, do a mourner, a willow tree, a house on a prairie, and a group of onlookers. The spontaneous emergence of affective and other qualities of people, things, places, and events falls under the heading of physiognomy, a phenomenon discussed since at least Aristotle, and a key feature of evolutionary theory, psychology, and perception as well as professional practice ("profiling") and popular talk. However, physiognomy is a controversial topic because of a suspect history, and is often renamed as non-verbal communication. The Expressiveness of Perceptual Experience: Physiognomy Reconsidered examines this venerable, attractive, and contentious topic within the unique perspective of research-oriented psychology. Included are the processes involved, primarily perceptual; origins, mainly evolutionary; and social-cultural factors as supplements. Discussed within a holistic-experiential (phenomenological)-aesthetic framework are physiognomy's ties to the arts as well as emotions, synesthesia, learning, development, and personality. Empirical investigations are summarized, including the author's.

In Physiognomy in Ming China: Fortune and the Body, Xing Wang investigates the intellectual and technical contexts in which the knowledge of physiognomy (xiangshu) was produced and transformed in Ming China (1368-1644 C.E.). Known as a fortune-telling technique via examining the human body and material objects, Xing Wang shows how the construction of the physiognomic body in many Ming texts represent a unique, unprecedented 'somatic cosmology'. Applying an anthropological reading to these texts and providing detailed analysis of this technique, the author proves that this physiognomic cosmology in Ming China emerged as a part of a new body discourse which differs from the modern scholarly discourse on the body.

Callie Callon investigates how some early Christian authors utilized physiognomic thought as rhetorical strategy, particularly with respect to persuasion. Callon shows how this encompassed denigrating theological opponents and forging group boundaries (invective against heretics or defence of Christians), self-representation to demonstrate the moral superiority of early Christians to Greco-Roman outsiders, and the cultivation of collective self-identity. The work begins with an overview of how physiognomy was used in broader antiquity as a component of persuasion. Callon then examines how physiognomic thought was employed by early Christians and how physiognomic tropes were employed to "prove" their orthodoxy and moral superiority. Building on the conclusions of the earlier chapters, Callon then focuses on the representation of the physiognomies of early Christian martyrs, before addressing the problem of the acceptance or even promotion of the idea of a physically lacklustre Jesus by the same authors who otherwise utilize traditional physiognomic thought.

In late fifteenth century Florence, Renaissance humanists rediscovered a secret, natural language hidden in the visual wisdom of the proverb 'the eyes are the windows of the soul'. Through its magical prism, the language of eyes, faces, voices, laughs, walks, even stones, plants and animals, all became windows into the souls of other people, of oneself, of nature, and ultimately of God. Some saw in its words the perfect hieroglyphic language by which Adam had first named nature, which, when combined with the art of memory, could bring about a form of 'inner writing' or mystical self-transformation. Yet many others dismissed it as a collection of arbitrary conventions, superstitious enigmas, or 'gypsy' riddles. Embroiled in the religious persecution of the Reformation, rejected as a science during the Scientific Revolution, in the age of Enlightenment physiognomy came to be seen as nothing more than an amusing entertainment. But with the dawn of Romanticism, be it in the realms of science, religion, or poetry, some began to see that physiognomy was no game and the flame of serious interest in physiognomy was once again rekindled. Combining book history and visual history, Dr Porter reconstructs this physiognomical eye, interprets the way in which books on physiognomy were read and traces the wider intellectual, social, and cultural changes that contributed to the metamorphosis of this way of beholding oneself and the natural world from the Renaissance to the dawn of Romanticism.