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Face Recognition - Real or Science Fiction?
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Wed Oct 25, 2006 09:42 AM
from the oops-i-did-it-again dept.
from the oops-i-did-it-again dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Facial recognition software has been touted as one of the technologies that will change our future, particularly in law enforcement. How close are we to being recognized by a computer anywhere we go, as portrayed in movies like Minority Report? According to the industry's recent Public Relations releases, these products are closer than we think.
The reality though, is that current products work only when utilizing a small comparative sample, and any attempts for an individual to disguise themselves typically throw off the results. To see how far this technology needs to go before becoming mainstream, one site utilized Government-tested face recognition software, available freely through MyHeritage.com, to compare hundreds of famous people, animals, and cartoons to a database of 2,000 celebrities. Some of the results showed promise for the technology, but most were just funny — for example, who would mistake Barbara Streisand for Shrek, or Lance Bass of N'Sync for a Teletubby?"
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trick question (Score:5, Funny)
I think it's more a question of 'how many beers' than of 'who.'
Re:trick question (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
I've heard this for years (Score:5, Interesting)
Many other problems in CV are like this - edge detection, segmentation, etc. But people write hacks that work in restricted conditions and say they've solved.
And look, you could always just put on those Groucho Marx glasses.
Re:I've heard this for years (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Matt Stone: an example (Score:2)
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re: hacks and restricted conditions (Score:5, Interesting)
Our spell-checkers in our word processors don't actually know anything about the rules of a language, phonics, etc. They just do lookups from a dictionary. If a word's not listed, it has no idea if it's spelled properly or not -- even if the misspelling is one that's simply not a possible correct sequence of letters for the language. Most don't even realize if a word is misspelled in the context of the sentence, as long as it matches a correct spelling in the word list.
Until we figure out how the human brain recognizes faces as individuals, we can't expect anything *but* a clever hack for a computer to do the same. And truthfully, I suspect the human brain takes many things into account to do a "recognition" on a person. How often do you see somebody in the store that you're pretty sure you know from a previous job, school, etc. but you're not quite sure? I've had this happen a few times, and to make a better determination, I had to take other factors into account, like the sound of their voice if I heard them speak, the way they walked, or maybe an expression that came across their face. Humans "key in" on specific things that help them remember a person. And depending on which "features" they chose, they may or may not be effective. (Say you remember a gal really well because of her long, flowing hair? If she cuts it real short, there's a good chance you won't recognize her at all anymore if she walks by you.)
Parent
Re:I've heard this for years (Score:5, Insightful)
Having worked in brain science for years I can say that the brain itself is a collection of hacks.
It's just a very huge collection that covers all of the bases that we find ourselves in from day to day. Put a brain in a situation it's not designed to handle and it breaks down just as badly as many artificial CV algorithms do.
Parent
Re:I've heard this for years (Score:4, Informative)
Ever since the advent of solid state electronics, it was said to be only a matter of time before robots would be sweeping, washing dishes, performing surgery, etc.
Things that we think are really simple, that even retarded people can do, like recognize a face or a voice, understand speech, move bipedally with grace (hell, with any number of legs -- 2, 4 or 6), pour a glass of water, etc. are *hard* for robots and AI. We don't even have a model for how these things work. Even really dumb animals like turkeys can run through their environments and successfully hunt and catch flying insects.
We do have robots that are getting good with articulation, like Asimo, but we still aren't sure whether they are using the same 'tricks' that organisms use. That is to say, they are a solution to the problem of bipedal motion, but we don't know if they are the same solution that the human mind is. I'm not sure that we have even a model of what solutions organisms use.
Meanwhile, things that we think are difficult, like playing chess, factoring polynomials, or other kinds of difficult math, are easy for a computer. Now we know that the brain can do complex math like trigonometry, in order to accomplish tasks like catching a ball. but that doesn't help the average person play chess or do complex math on paper. However, the average person excels at these hard AI problems, like having a conversation or pouring a glass of water.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I also worked on a project to compare images. The idea was general purpose, not just for faces only. Unfortunately, it didn't really work. I took the woefully slow prototype and rewrote it so it worked correctly, and was far faster. And all that did was help destroy their illusions and delusions that it was going to work. Before, they could be optimistic because it wasn't fast enough to do hundreds of tests, and so they were able to point to extremely small sets of data upon which it had apparently mo
Mathematical rigor is a part of vision (Score:3, Insightful)
recognized (Score:4, Interesting)
so I guess... (Score:3, Insightful)
Is it just me, or does that seem like a stupid way to test the software? If you want to show that rudimentary disguise is an easy way to get around it, that's valid, but just messing with the sample of potential matches by throwing in cartoon characters destroys the validity of the "study".
-stormin
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But how are you going to convince Shrek to rob a bank?
-matthew
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PHB
Report to PHB version 2:- This software is so bad it confuses Barbara Striesland and Shrek
PHB
A 'good' report depends on it's audience. For most
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Just saying...
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Especially when they start the interrogation with: "So we've finally caught up with you at last, Yosemite Sam [wikipedia.org]."
If the system is designed to match faces against a database of photographs of real humans and you plug cartoons in there - what do you expect? False positives generated in this manner prove nothing about how the system would actually work. If there are a large number of false positives even when the match database is realistic, then we have a problem.
-stormin
But I thought (Score:3, Informative)
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MyHeritage site (Score:5, Informative)
It's flawless (Score:2)
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-matthew
Inevitable. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to nitpick excessively, but you could easily substitute portions of this article with terms like (and relating to) “Internet”, “personal computer”, “telephone”, “car”, and others. Asking ourselves if a technology is “real or science fiction” when it already exists (albiet in a primitive form) is silly. Of course it exists; the question itself cites examples. Perhaps the meaningful questions might be along the lines of: “what are the challenges associated with making it accurate?” or “what impact will facial recognition have on society?”
Legal hoops (Score:2, Interesting)
I wonder if the same systems will apply to a computer analysed image of my face; will there be a criterea for when this image is admissable in court? Will I have rights concerning my image? Or are we just going towards a 1984 styl
Re:Legal hoops (Score:4, Insightful)
The more interesting question, I suggest, is whether a computer recognition of your face is going to be in any way equivalent to a human recognition of your face.
For example: if you stroll into a 7-Eleven, and the donuphage with a badge sitting there swilling coffee thinks you look like a famous bank robber whose mug has been circulated by the FBI, then he's entitled to take you into custody, and search you (for his own safety and those nearby, et cetera). If he finds half a gram of coke on you, you're in trouble. Now suppose it isn't the cop's eye/brain combination that "recognizes" you as a bank robber, but rather his shoulder-mounted camera/computer combination. Is he still entitled to act in the same way?
You can argue it both ways: (1) the camera/computer is almost certainly always going to be worse at this kind of thing than the eye/brain. Recognition is about the single most important thing our eyes and brains do, and they are highly optimized for it by natural selection. If it could be done better and faster, we would do it. So, we should trust the camera/computer less. But (2) the camera/computer is not subject to the vagaries of human psychology, mood, et cetera. The cop may take you in unreasonably because he doesn't like your skin color or length of hair, the camera/computer isn't subject to the same prejudices. So maybe it's better to trust the mindless device.
Parent
Re:Legal hoops (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
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If you have a surveillance video of a crime scene, and a huge database of faces of citizens, then you could use this to narrow down your list of suspects. Obviously once it ever gets to the court system, there will be plenty of human experts on hand to look at the camera footage and testify as to whether it looks like you.
Also, this could be used to flag "suspicious" people at airports and other places. That way, the human securi
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/arti
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Why? They have to get the warrant to get your DNA. Once they have it, they can test it.
Getting a picture is easy. In fact, they take one when they book you. Why shouldn't they be able to use it?
Also, they use non-scientific face matching all the time (line-ups and eye-witnesses). Why shouldn't they be allowed to do the same thing with a more accurate and unbiased judge like a computer over a person (who may be the victim, or biased in some other way)?
I would think it would be allowed now without any kind
The miracle of technology (Score:3, Funny)
So, i see it's working correctly!
How can it not be real? (Score:2)
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I
I freely admit I know jack about GAs, but (Score:2)
That sounds exactly like the sort of problem that you could use GAs on.
Unless, of course, I'm completely wrong about the state of the art in genetic algorithms, or am making some othe
GA guided NN's (Score:2)
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The problem is the inputs. Do you inputs sets of geometry (eyes are X" apart, at an angle of 0.53 degrees, chin is .5" below lips, blah blah blah), the raw image, or something else? If you use the raw image, you'd need a system in the front end scale/rotate the images to be in about the same place otherwise you probably have no chance (unless you want your neural net to do that TOO, which would make training harder and take longer).
Even if you use geometry (we have a vague understanding of what makes peopl
Initially, cameras would be spaced like eyes (Score:3, Interesting)
If I was training to match V1-4, I'd have the input come from two "eyes" with inputs similar to what our eyes actually provide to our brain. We know quite a bit about visual cortex, but there's a lot we don't know. Initially, I'd train it using a batch of photographs for a single person (we'll call her "Momma") and then I'd train with a few others (where a match is a match only if it's the same person). From there, I'd create histograms of parameter settings that seem to do an adequate job on this small set
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Actually, it's terribly hard. You can say that "this picture should match this person and that picture should match that person", and that will give you an algorithm that works great on those faces, but can/will give horrible results on everything else.
Of course, if your genotype representation is good, a GA would surely do wonders, but then you're basically back to where you started, how to represent and interpret a face in general.
Cool (Score:2, Insightful)
Granted - the examples looked pretty good, but I just can't see Grace Kelly when I look myself in the mirror.
Here to Stay (Score:5, Insightful)
About false positives. So what? Eyewitnesses make mistakes also. Eventually, perhaps very soon, machines will surpass humans in this arena just as they have in others. Can anyone here on Slashdot defeat Deep Blue at Chess?
As to the legality or ethics, what can be done will be done, at least in public areas. If it would be legal for a human to do (they haven't outlawed humans scanning for suspects in public areas) then it will be legal for machines to do despite the unease many will feel knowing they are constantly being watched.
Belittling technology (Score:3, Interesting)
As always Southpark says it best about Streisand (Score:2, Funny)
Sadaam Hussein: Hey buddy, I know I was mean before, but don't worry, I can change!
Cartman: Okay.
Not. Fuck, shit, cock, ass, dildo, boner, bitch, pussy, butthole, Barbara Streisand!
Possibility for error? (Score:2)
On the other hand, fingerprints are completely unique, even between identical twins, and (last I heard) unchangeable. Researchers would be better off spending time on improving fingerprint-scanning technology for identification purposes, although clearly face scanning would be even less intrusive for other tasks.
Must be science fiction... (Score:3)
this thing needs scores (Score:2)
Isn't face recognition a case of pattern matching? (Score:2)
retinal scanning (Score:2, Informative)
Now I could be wrong but I am pretty sure Minority report was portraying retinal scanning not facial recognition
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Shrek's face is not Mike Meyers' face. Since they are comparing faces, this is not an invalid comparison, as you think.