OPRES

Unleash your full potential with OPRES: The groundbreaking technology OPRES (optical personality rating & evaluation system) establishes the utmost essential psychological tool in human resource management in the near future.

The cutting-edge AI behind OPRES integrates facial recognition into the world’s leading biometrical personality-evaluation system. This innovation allows a boost in the users performance and productivity, which consequently results in enhancing their own market value along with, all importantly, the augmentation of high-calibre human capital in leading companies. In reality OPRES is a critical design project, an interactive installation, designed to use irritation as mechanism to make crucially urgent topics of the twenty-first century approachable toward an exhibition visitor: ›AI ethics‹, ›biased algorithms‹, ›gender (in)equality embedded in technology‹ or the ›escalating pressure in performance society in late-capitalism‹.
Have a glance at the bright future of personality enhancement and get yourself evaluated.

OPRES was shown during VIENNA DESIGN WEEK 2021 within the exhibition Fuck You Very Much. Designers as Troublemakers.

Team: Julia Winkler & Andreas Palfinger
2020–21

Article for the exhibition publication → here

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OPRES
Optical Personality Rating and Evaluation System:
Am I realizing my full potential? Am I good enough? Have I wasted too much time? Should I have done things differently? Am I truly the best version of myself that I can be?
OPRES (Optical Personality Rating and Evaluation System) is an innovative system for the human resource management of big companies and a psychological tool to increase one’s own performance. In reality, however, it was designed to make users doubt themselves in everything they do. The predictive abilities of artificial intelligence trigger human feelings, such as fear of failure, helplessness and powerlessness. OPRES puts us in a hamster wheel of performance boosting and keeps pushing us on relentlessly in the race for success.

Be the Best Version of Yourself
The potential of individuals describes the upper limits of their range of development — the more potential somebody has, the faster and less expensive his/her development will be. This is a crucial point for many companies: Scientific studies have long shown that investing into the right people can maximize an organization’s profits.
OPRES is a revolutionary tool that uses a biometric DeepScan to produce a detailed assessment of individuals and to provide an in-depth evaluation of their personal potential.
The artificial intelligence operating behind OPRES learns from millions of personal patterns of behavior in social media, from CVs, from photos that are shared online and, thanks to smart wearables, even from social interactions in people’s professional and private lives. Based on this data, conclusions are drawn and the career choices and character traits that determine the success of users are analyzed together with their physiognomy, which is in turn associated with certain genetically determined characteristics.
The DeepScan process relies on all these findings and makes it possible to assess the character traits and potential of individuals in real-time on the basis of their biometric data, obtained via face scans.
In a first step, OPRES evaluates 4 factors to rate a user’s ability to compete:
· drive to excel
· catalytic learning ability
· an enterprising spirit
· dynamic sensors

Next, the system finds the closest match — a person with equal potential and qualifications. This comparison initiates a phase of reflection in the users that is intended to make them confront themselves and to boost their motivation.
OPRES produces reliable results in order to provide the best possible basis for decisions to optimize a person’s professional career or plan corporate investment into the further training of extraordinary employees. The system also makes it possible to draw conclusions about the market value of individuals.

Designed for Success. Designed to Oppress.
Everybody knows the feeling of disappointment that frequently results from high expectations. In the spirit of Designers as Troublemakers, OPRES combines this mechanism with our seemingly unlimited faith in machine predictions.
OPRES initially creates high expectations and praises the users, often rating them with High Potential. Then the system finds a match, a person with equal potential — who, in most cases, nevertheless leads a more successful and more fulfilled life.
This process is intended to make users second-guess and criticize themselves. »If only you were more committed to your goals and spent less time sitting on your couch, you could make it in life. Face it: You will never amount to very much if you carry on like this. Here is scientific proof that you are a loser.«

AI as Troublemaker: Algorithmic Bias
Another factor that makes the system a troublemaker is its acquired algorithmic bias. When we look at the top levels of our performance society’s landscape, we mostly find individuals with similar physiognomies. Some people will be able to realize their full potential. Others won’t. This is due to phenomena such as the glass ceiling, multi-dimensional discrimination and the gender pay gap.
The artificial intelligence behind OPRES thus rationally learns that trends concerning gender and ethnicity can be found for any professional position — and arrives at the logical conclusion that certain features are preferable to others.
As it learns from current data, AI generally incorporates our reality’s prejudices into its code and makes biased decisions on this basis. This is called algorithmic bias, a well-known problem in AI ethics.
A Global Discourse

OPRES broaches burning questions of our times that divide opinions all over the world: To what extent do we want our lives to be governed by machines? Where will the combination of performance boosting and AI lead us? Are we putting too much faith in algorithms or is their rationality and speed just what we need? What happens if we let these developments determine the fate of individuals?