I really hate how gore and sex get classified as mature/18+. To me, gore is something that we'd all be better off never having to deal with regardless of age, and the latter is people shoving their narrow moral views down my throat. If you want smut or gore, say so. Don't be condescending and use words like 18+ or mature, unless there is some legal reason to do so.

@Bishop

why is it idiotic?

Sure, it might fail. The first few (hundred) times it will probably come up with inaccurate results, but what's the harm in seeing how good it can get at such? For research purposes, y'know?

There's all sorts of factors out there that can mess up results, but that's where it gets interesting in our opinion. How much data does a system like that need to correct for such factors?

That is stupid because it is unnecessary. They already know our age from our case sensitive information that we fill either in our ID or whatever. There are so many factors, humans are so different, their mental maturity level so divided it is impossible to tell someone's age just from that. Mental age sure but what is mental age? Someone is older because he likes wine and the other likes soda? It is stupid and not needed. Waste of resources when there are more efficient way to go about it.

that would be an interesting idea... using one of the rudimentary machine learning AIs we have today to determine a user's age/maturity. How correct would such machine be? If it collects data based on posts and other openly available data?

i.e. one that looks at things like language, interests, etc. Rather than merely taking it on the submitted birthday date/year things from various sites.

What do you think of such idea?

Nah. Maturity, maybe if the AI was developed enough (it isn't at the moment) but actual age, nope. In fact, given how complicated the concept of maturity can be, even that is not necessarily likely to be a good measure.

AI is simply not intelligent enough - that I'm aware of - to make an accurate prediction beyond obvious ones that could be done manually.

I'd imagine AI would find such a wide spectrum of variables that it is bound to simply make broad sweeping predictions with little basis in reality. But then, who knows how far Ai will eventually be able to go.