Google: Our New System For Recognizing Faces Is the Best

schwit1 writes Last week, a trio of Google researchers published a paper on a new artificial intelligence system dubbed FaceNet that it claims represents the most accurate approach yet to recognizing human faces. FaceNet achieved nearly 100-percent accuracy on a popular facial-recognition dataset called Labeled Faces in the Wild, which includes more than 13,000 pictures of faces from across the web. Trained on a massive 260-million-image dataset, FaceNet performed with better than 86 percent accuracy.

The approach Google's researchers took goes beyond simply verifying whether two faces are the same. Its system can also put a name to a face—classic facial recognition—and even present collections of faces that look the most similar or the most distinct. Every advance in facial recognition makes me think of Paul Theroux's dystopian Ozone.

Comments

Confusion

[clam666]

FaceNet achieved nearly 100-percent accuracy...

" performed with better than 86 percent accuracy. "

I'm not able to parse these numbers, or I have a misunderstanding as to what nearly means.

Re:Confusion

[Anonymous Coward]

Different databases used for different tests.
13,000 pictures used in Labeled Faces in the Wild test
260M pictures used in another test

Re:Confusion

[Anonymous Coward]

100-percent accuracy and recognizing the presence of a face in a photo
86-percent accuracy in determining the identity of the face in the photo

Re:Confusion

[clam666]

Thanks for clearing that up.

Maybe I screwed up by being on reddit to long earlier, but unless it detects cats I see no use for this technology.

Re:Confusion

[RingDev]

The part that intrigues me is that they claim to return a name with the face.

This would imply that their facial recognition isn't just a image match, but that it looks at the context of the photos it finds to attempt to identify meta data about the people within it. Assuming that their facial recognition is no better than anyone else's recognition, by adding meta data to the calculation, especially given Google's propensity to collect and search meta data, it would seem likely that they use the meta data to make stronger identifications and find more reference photos of potential matches.

For example, if they do the first facial only search and come up with 10,000 possible matches, then they do meta searches on those 10,000 to find more pictures of them, then those pictures are compared for stronger 'training', you wind up with a much higher level of accuracy.

-Rick

why do we continue to do research..

[TheGratefulNet]

on really BAD ideas and freedom-killing ideas?

you don't think this will be mostly used against us, one way or another?

do no evil? yeah, right. I have this bridge here I can sell you...

yet another example of 'lets plow ahead and not care about social blowback from our research'. scientists and engineers really need to go back to school and take an ETHICS course or two. maybe they'd realize that 'because you can, does not mean you should'.

I see nothing good coming from this. nothing at all. just pure evil to be used against people.

it takes a wise person to realize that some things should not be done. of course, google has geniuses but those geniuses have no idea at all how they are being played and how their work will be used to reduce freedom and privacy. sad that smart people can be conned into working against their own best interests ;(

Re:why do we continue to do research..

[Anonymous Coward]

why do we continue to do research..
on really BAD ideas and freedom-killing ideas?

Same reason we continue to write posts with the first sentence in the title:

Because we are fucking self-centered assholes who think we are clever and
don't give a damn whether or not our actions make life harder for other people.

Re:why do we continue to do research..

[TFlan91]

Scientists and engineers are by definition not supposed to be ethical.

You and I, as private citizens, take what they produce, determine if it's ethical/profitable/whatever, and act accordingly. Whether that is enacting a law banning said product, regulating it, or saying let the market do with it as it pleases.

As a programmer, I applaud their skill, and even more so that they were able to complete what they set out to do. As a programmer, I understand why we celebrate these type of stories.

As a private citizen, I do fear for my privacy.

But do not confuse the two perspectives.

Re:why do we continue to do research..

[McGruber]

Scientists and engineers are by definition not supposed to be ethical.

Professional Engineers (PEs) disagree:

Ethics - National Society of Professional Engineers

and

National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE) Code of Ethics for Engineers

Re:Google

[TheGratefulNet]

there was speculation that, early on, the nsa was a key funder of google. I think there was some dns registration stuff that made people do a double-take (long time ago, when google first started).

could google have gotton so far without nsa's help? one wonders. and one will never actually know, either.

Re:Google

[mbkennel]

> could google have gotton so far without nsa's help? one wonders. and one will never actually know, either.

It's the other way around. NSA was interested in techniques and technology from google, especially high-performance large scale data processing. NSA was/is behind, and they knew it, and they knew the best didn't want to work with them any more when they could get a pre-IPO position at Google when Google had stunningly capable & ambitious people (2000-2005) on average.

Real Names

[thegoldenear]

Now do you understand Google+'s initial policy on real names?

Pete Boyd

Re:Somehow I don't feel like celebrating

[Opportunist]

Hmm... you're right, we have to get that under control.

Get the PR dept to slap together a press kit. What we need is footage of some murderers and generally insane people with neckbeards. Make sure that you add a few shots of those islamist loonies, they're full of face wool, too. Tell them to not waste all their powder on one shot, have them release it slowly so it can sink in with the targets. Try to get that Stallman guy in there too, somehow, that way we might get a shot at that open source stuff where we can't sensibly include our backdoors. At least with the boomers it should stick, they know jack about computers but trust the TV.

Networks should gobble this up without asking, it's free news, that's all they care about.

For the millennials, try to get the story into one of those "10 things you didn't know" pages. Slap something together about 10 things you don't know about neckbeards, 10 most heinous murderers (of course you pick the neckbeard fraction), get creative! They'll love it.

Find celebrities and make sure they hate beards. Beards have to become "uncool". Only clean shaven guys get the chicks. And guys, let's not forget the fags.

Get back to me when this is rolling, maybe we don't even have to do more.