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Computer Spots Fakers Better Than People Do
Rambo Tribble (1273454) writes "Using sophisticated pattern matching software, researchers have had substantially better success with a computer, than was obtained with human subjects, in spotting faked facial expressions of pain. [Original, paywalled article in Current Biology] From the Reuters piece: '... human subjects did no better than chance — about 50 percent ...', 'The computer was right 85 percent of the time.'"
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The people who programmed "the computer" were better.
Perhaps watching faked facial expressions on TV and whatnot has dulled our ability to distinguish them?
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My guess is that this would be useful for detecting people who only want narcotics to sell, or to use recreationally, But a computer algorithm that falsely identifies pain sufferers as fakers would be downright cruel, whereas a computer algorithm that fails to identify fakers is merely less useful for drug control efforts.
Computers do not feel empathy. Perhaps the empathy humans feel when seeing others in pain overrides any minor inconsistencies in the visual side of things. Further, humans do not "analyze" one others' faces to identify an emotion. We see faces (even if it's the same ones over and over) so many times that it's just an automatic, generalized classification. If people often faked painful facial features, and there was some strong motivation to identify that fact, then I'm sure we would be more adept at it. The only time I can think of in a real-world setting where people fake painful facial features is in jest or to be funny or "sarcastic" in some way (not counting football (aka soccer) matches). Thus the overall context totally reveals the expression to be fake and thus visual side of things is just an afterthought.
Better known as 318230.
Still not good enough to easily deny someone pain meds.
What did they use to teach the computer?
Did they torture a bunch of undergraduates with cattle prods, and then load the photographs of the undergraduates screaming in pain into their great big giant neural network of "true positives"?
Versus photographs of other undergraduates, deeply immersed in their favorite pornography websites, as their "true negatives"*?
And who were the human beings who were competing against the computers?
Random joe sixpacks plucked right off of the street, or folks like Military Medics and Civilian EMTs and Oncology Nurses and Trauma Surgeons, who have a lifetime of experience watching true pain in their patients and who know exactly what it looks like?
*And God only knows how they would categorize the undergraduates who like to hang out at sites like kink.com, watching naked people being tortured with cattle prods.
Banks all over the world uses scanners and computers to spot fake money too, because they don't think the humans can do it as well.
I would really want to go over the photos they were showing people. I can think of three different ways this study was contaminated.
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If that's the case, they should let it run against Shatner in TOS.
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This article is a GREAT example of how betas are fooled by the facts. The LIE of the article is the conclusion- that the computer has better 'PATTERN'-matching skills, but now lets consider things again.
Microsoft's NSA domestic spy platform, the Xbox One, was launched with a VERY specific claim- that it could monitor the heartbeat of people in the room. Sounds outlandish until one understands that a little bit of DSP processing combined with the fact that the cameras of the NSA designed sensor block, the Kinect 2, see well in infra-red.
The relevance is this. When a computer 'looks' at a face, it has access to simple data that the Human may not. This has NOTHING to do with 'clever' algorithms. And then, of course, a computer can be pro-programmed with simple rules that if known to a Human observer, would give them the same success rate or better.
Let's say that a Human in pain has a simple 'TELL' (poker term- Google it). Even if a person could be educated to look for that 'tell' does not mean that random subjects have this knowledge. On the other hand, the ANYTHING BUT CLEVER computer software WILL have been given knowledge of this 'tell'. So, to a beta, the computer will APPEAR to be clever.
So what would be a valid test of software to impress an alpha? Simple- well trained Humans vs the computer. Why wasn't the test conducted like this? After all the computer is supposedly demonstrating a SKILL, so the comparison would be against Humans with a similar skill, NEVER against a randomly 'chosen' bunch of unskilled people.
The promotion of this software GARBAGE is a usual con to try to bilk money out of dimwitted investors. And its presence on Slashdot is the usual "kerching" pay-for-play promotion.
determine that pro wrestling is fake?
Wasn't it already postulated that humans are inherently bad at detecting fake facial expressions (and by extension lies) in order for better social cohesion?
Being less good at detecting lies meant more cooperation and trust (The irony) which lead the highly perceptive (and less cooperative) to simply.... die off.
Most lies are white lies. We probably have inherently good social intentions, but perhaps the truth is just in the way?
It's interesting to imagine that the development of these traits could have lead to strange mannerisms in our contemporary society...
We always ask each other how it's going and reply with "Great! how are you?". Remnants of social acceptance ritual or something more?
Perhaps in a previous, less herd like animal ancestry, millenia ago. Your very very life would be highly dependent on being able to perceive the primal intentions of others. It's only humorous that fitness would be determined by the exact opposite trait here in the present.
Just a thought, but might this simply indicate that fake facial are trained/wired to fool humans (and the attributes a human watcher would consciously or subconsciously use to judge the expression), not computers?
Humans did not evolve to trick computers
This technology can get quite dangerous if it becomes good at detecting people with guilty expressions.
forget GMO crops, asteroid collisions, global warming, etc. this will be the end of civilization. machines everywhere that detect and call-out deception. lies are the foundation of civilization.
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This will get used when dispensing pain medication, doctors will be compelled to use such a mechanism to vet patients (either by law or by the threat of lawsuits and indictments). Next step will be another flavor of lie detector.
In practice this is of dubious value, but, since it's better than nothing (read: relying on human intuition) it will be widely adopted.
It was ***ice water*** not actual pain.
from TFA:
For the first one, they told them to ***make a fake painful face***
I'd say humans did just fine...better than the researchers who designed the study!
The computer just recognized the patterns it was told...it was optimized on their faces
another AI hype/fail
Thank you Dave Raggett
another important factor to note: they didn't experience actual pain in the control
from TFA:
For the first they told the subjects to make a **fake** painful face.
So, a face painful face vs a hand in ice water w/ no instruction...vs an optimized facial recognizer optimized on their expressions.
IMHO the subjects performed better than **the researchers themselves**
This is atrocious experimental design.
Thank you Dave Raggett
I often wonder how well our medical establishment has studied the euphoric effect of opiates and how they contribute to or even in some cases surpass the functional pain relief.
I had a traumatic hand injury two months ago which involved a partial amputation of one of my fingers. I experience a lot of "pins and needles" nerve stimulation and some false limb pain (pressure or stabbing-type sensation where I have no finger) and generalized fatigue in my hand. I take small (5 mg) doses of oxycodone once or twice a day and I "feel better" but without necessarily specific reduction of any one kind of pain -- I still feel it, but it bothers me less.
I don't think it's an addiction response; some days I take zero and don't feel any classic withdrawal symptom I've ever read about. But I sometimes wonder if the pain reduction is really the result of interaction with my pain, or because the eurphoric nature of the drug just makes me feel overall better, raising my psychological tolerance of pain without actually reducing the pain itself.
I wonder philosophically if it "matters" -- if the drug produces a euphoria that allows me to tolerate the pain, is that somehow less legitimate than some functional reduction of pain that may be the drug's principal purpose? What is the effect and what is the side effect? Os is it just a question of dose versus ancillary risks (whether it's addiction or some other more organic disturbance, eg, skin rash, etc).
I'm sure that the computer got tons of training, but the people were probably just people. The results might be enormously different if it were preceded by some careful instruction on how to perform the task.
So random people weren't very good at it, but what about experts in this sort of thing, like a Sherlock Holmes? How would they compare to the computer?
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If people could accurately identify pain and other basic emotions reasonably accurately, the bulk of the porn industry would be out of a job.
due to my having an illness that is at times VERY painfull , and because my GP has known me for over a decade , he does not just look at my FACE ! a couple of years ago , he told his secrety to call an ambulance because of my STANCE , and that was before i even had a chance to say anything to him , due to the fact that i try not to worry my familie , i have learned not to show how much pain i am in !! another thing is that most people do not seem to know that a person in a lot , and i do mean a lot of pain , or in shock behave differently . for example a person i know had an ulcer burst , a phycologist needed to know if he had his pension card when he called an ambo for him , because the person that was ill had problems answering , the other bloke was getting angry ! i squatted down ( the ill person was sitting ) and asked if he had the card that he had to show to a busdriver to get the consetion rate , the answer was " yes " and came straight away ! the point i am trying to make is that looking at someone's face in pain " or not " is only a small part , in the assesment .
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