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Averaging Inanimate Objects Together Produces a Very Human Face

Posted by timothy on from the what-we-look-for dept.

StartsWithABang writes: It's well known that by aligning and averaging a wide variety of human faces together, an eerie "average" human face can be arrived at. But we see faces in things all the time, from natural scenes like terrain to artificial ones like cars, coffeemakers and combination locks. For the first time, someone averaged together a large number of images of objects appearing to have faces, and the result, strikingly, was an eerily human face. You'd think this might say more about the algorithm than the images themselves, but when noise was used, no human face emerged at all.

5 of 103 comments (clear)

  1. Surprise! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So, average a bunch of things that only have their resemblance to a human face in common, and you end up with a human face? I didn't see that coming.

    1. Re: Surprise! by PopeRatzo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think people are just wired to seek out humanity in things.

      But strangely, not in each other.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
  2. No kidding by shellbeach · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You'd think this might say more about the algorithm than the images themselves, but when noise was used, no human face emerged at all.

    Wait, so, when images that looked more like faces were used, the average looked more like a human face? Just crazy.

    It's cute, but I'm not sure it's particularly profound.

  3. Go away, startswithabang by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Your blogspam links to Forbes is offensive.

    Stop linking a website that is designed to broke hyperlinks and to force through an ad page.

  4. forbs by JohnVanVliet · · Score: 1, Insightful

    man that is one F'ed up site that i can not get past the ADVERTISING 3 second countdown

      that is royally F'ED UP

    --
    "I don't pitch OpenSUSE Linux to my friends, i let Microsoft do it for me