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Researcher Trying To Teach Computer What Women He's Attracted To

jfruh writes: Harm de Vries, a post-doctoral researcher at the Université de Montréal, is trying to build an algorithm that will sort through pictures on Tinder and OKCupid and pick out women he'll find attractive. "Tinder kept giving me pictures of girls I wasn't attracted to," he said in a phone interview. "So I wondered if I could use deep learning." His program, built using deep learning techniques, has about a 68 percent success rate, which isn't that bad. (A human friend to whom de Vries described his preferences managed 76 percent.)

31 of 181 comments (clear)

  1. Female and alive. by harrkev · · Score: 4, Funny

    Let me guess: female and alive.

    --
    "-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
    1. Re:Female and alive. by LessThanObvious · · Score: 2

      female and alive. Since the most attractive women on dating sites are fake profiles, that's harder to find than it sounds.

  2. It is by will alone I sent my mind in motion... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...wait, opps, wrong de vries....

  3. Re:bullshit, guys don't get dates by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm sure if it was a woman looking to filter men this project would be lauded as 'empowering.'

  4. Is this really a problem? by NotDrWho · · Score: 5, Funny

    I usually just type in "blonde Thai ladyboy" into the search box and the results are almost 100% what I'm looking for.

    Is that so hard?

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    SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
  5. Shallow by SpankiMonki · · Score: 3, Insightful

    News flash: pictures can lie. Here's an idea - try talking to a girl in order to see if you might like her.

    1. Re:Shallow by circletimessquare · · Score: 5, Insightful

      actually the idea is to like the looks first, then talk to her. then reject the ones you dislike based on personality

      so you get physical attraction and personality compatibility. both

      if you just talk to girls and find someone you're compatible with on a personality level but you don't want to have sex with because they're physically unattractive to you, the term for that is "friend" (as an aside, many, many men posting on this site probably know this zone well)

      what you call shallow is actually called mate selection. if you can't get an erection, you're not going to procreate. mate selection is not friend selection. friend selection is a different topic. to not realize the difference is... shallow, ironically

      --
      intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
    2. Re:Shallow by Intrepid+imaginaut · · Score: 2

      Try this experiment, newsflash. Set up two profiles, one with a fake picture of an average looking guy with average credentials. Then set up another profile of a ripped young stud with less than average credentials. Get back to us when you find out which gets more attention.

      It's neither bad nor good, it's just human nature.

    3. Re:Shallow by serviscope_minor · · Score: 2

      Unfortunately, the frequent problem here is that if one person is highly interested in the other, but the other is not and wants to "friendzone" him/her, it usually doesn't go over too well.

      Indeed: the person who has been "friendzoned" is in fact dishonest. They claim to be OK with being friends and often act as a friend, but that is a dishonest ruse to actually get into the other person's pants hoping that sufficient proximity will do what a lack of chemistry couldn't achieve. If they're actually a friend, then they're a friend, not friend zoned.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
  6. A better algorithm by alvinrod · · Score: 3, Insightful

    A better algorithm would be one that can spot which images of men or women are either fake or taken in such a way as to mislead as to the appearance of a person. It doesn't really matter if the computer can pick with 100% accuracy the people you're attracted to if none of them actually look like their pictures.

    I'd suggest building a dating site where there are no pictures and people only describe their interests or personality, but people would just lie about that too.

    1. Re:A better algorithm by NotDrWho · · Score: 3, Funny

      Here's a pro tip: The picture with the kid wearing a "Class of 1990" t-shirt in the background is probably not an honest reflection of what she really looks like.

      --
      SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
    2. Re:A better algorithm by Hognoxious · · Score: 2

      A better algorithm would be one that can spot which images of men or women are either fake or taken in such a way as to mislead as to the appearance of a person.

      Easy - URL contains the string "ashley madison".

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  7. And what about... by hyperar · · Score: 2

    The algorithm to find girls attracted to him can be represented by a simple: "return false;"

  8. A Paradox, perhaps? by chesterw · · Score: 2

    If I'm reading this correctly, our post-doc protagonist has created a deep learning algorithm to automate the process of being shallow? I have no words. . .

  9. Wierd by Tailhook · · Score: 5, Funny

    The guy is creating a profile selection algorithm to sift through mostly fake algorithmically generated profiles because the fake profile site's own selection algorithm is inadequate.....

    Sexbots are going to be really, really popular.

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    Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
    1. Re:Wierd by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2

      Sexbots are going to be really, really popular.

      Once sexbots are "good enough" the human population is going to crash. Populations are already declining in Japan, China, and much of Europe. This trend will soon accelerate.

  10. Supply and demand by GeLeTo · · Score: 2

    Tinder shows him pictures of women that have some chance of finding him attractive. It's a supply and demand thing - there are more men than women on Tinder, so he may have to tone down a bit his expectations.

  11. That's easy by bjdevil66 · · Score: 2

    If you think you're attractive, create an image-reading algorithm that picks girls that looks like yourself (facial features, shape, etc.)

    Done.

    Look at successful, power couples in the entertainment business sometime (especially athletes) and see if you can spot the narcissistic pattern...

    If you don't think you're attractive, I guess you can put a NOT in front of the algorithm...

  12. Re:bullshit, guys don't get dates by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Women will date anything as long as it has money.

  13. How incredibly cruel by Krishnoid · · Score: 2, Funny

    I can't believe he's having something do that for him when there's something willing to tirelessly look out for his happiness right there. Maybe one day he'll realize he had love right in front of him, and he and Eliza/Alice v.2 or whatever he's calling his algorithm can live a happy, long life together.

  14. How about a real challenge? by Kiyyik · · Score: 4, Funny

    Let's see if he can use deep learning to filter only the women that would have anything to do with someone who would do this.

  15. Prior Art by Tablizer · · Score: 2

    Didn't we see this in Weird Science?

  16. Re:bullshit, guys don't get dates by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm sure if it was a woman looking to filter men this project would be lauded as 'empowering.'

    Tinder and similar apps are already doing this, both for men and women, and nobody but passive-aggressive gamergaters are bringing the misogyny discussion into this. Calling it shallow is fair, both for men and women, but is something a significant portion of both genders do.

  17. Help the dude. by AndyKron · · Score: 2

    The dude needs help. Serious help.

  18. if at first you don't succeed, try the opposite by Pseudonymous+Powers · · Score: 5, Funny

    Researcher Trying To Teach Computer What Women He's Attracted To

    Well, at least he's trying something new. The usual, and completely wrongheaded, approach a computer nerd uses when trying to get laid is to try to teach women he's attracted to about computers.

  19. Re:bullshit, guys don't get dates by cayenne8 · · Score: 2

    I'm sure if it was a woman looking to filter men this project would be lauded as 'empowering.'

    Yep,if it were a filter for women, it wold be called a breakthrough....for men, it is "Troll-A-Vision"...or an anti-beer goggles simulator....

    --
    Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
  20. Asimov did it! by rainwalker · · Score: 2

    Isaac Asimov wrote a short story about this years ago ("True Love"), abeit in a much more entertaining fashion.

    "I will say to her, 'I am Joe, and you are my true love.'"

  21. Re:bullshit, guys don't get dates by Oligonicella · · Score: 2

    I love the trolling. AC posts comments then an AC accuses AC of being a GamerGater with no substance. What would be the odds it's the same person?

  22. Needs more statistics by Idarubicin · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Neither the summary nor the linked article provide the necessary statistics to tell us how well this algorithm actually works. We're told it has a 68% success rate, which presumably means that 68% of the time it gives the same answer as de Vries (the human subject/programmer).

    The problem is, we're not told anything about the sensitivity or specificity of the technique. What is the rate of false positives? False negatives?

    Let's say that de Vries typically finds 1 out of 3 (33%) of the profile pictures "attractive". His computer could score 67% accuracy just by rejecting every single picture. (Such an algorithm would have zero sensitivity, but perfect specificity, and a terrible false negative rate. The "reject-everything" algorithm also scores better the more picky de Vries gets.)

    This sort of story is only interesting if it includes specific information about where and how his algorithm fails (and succeeds).

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    ~Idarubicin
    1. Re:Needs more statistics by penguinoid · · Score: 2

      That's all well and good, but you're running the test backwards. Unless you think de Vries is looking at the rejected women to make sure that he finds them unattractive, as opposed to looking at the selected women to make sure he finds them attractive. The false positive rate only matters if it doesn't significantly cut down on unattractive candidates. And so long as he doesn't run out of candidates to look over, the false negative rate is a meaningless bug.

      Of course, good luck to him if his true love isn't in the habit of uploading her picture, or if lots of people upload photos of supermodels.

      Also, one thing that would be really useful is if the algorithm could counter the bad lighting effect.

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  23. Re:bullshit, guys don't get dates by CanadianMacFan · · Score: 2

    Some women will date anything that has a lot of money.
    Men will date anything that puts out.