Human Brain Still Beats Computers At Finding Messages and Meaning Within Noise (hackaday.com)

szczys writes: One thing the human brain still does a lot better than computers is to recognize patterns within noise. That's why CAPTCHA uses distorted images to prove you're human, and random number generators are often inspected by visual representation. There is a technology that leverages this human knack for signal processing to make us part of the machine. The Hellschreiber is a communications device which has no idea whatsoever what the message actually is. It transfers a signal from one unit to the next, before being assembled into an image. A human looking at the image will see words, much like CAPTCHA. But even if the signal isn't perfect, our brains can often pick out the order within the madness, much like inspecting a PRNG for uniform distribution.

Comments

Are The Computers Better

[Greyfox]

How about at finding messages that aren't there in the noise? The human brain is excellent at doing that, so in the end the computer might win on error rate.

Re:Are The Computers Better

[lhowaf]

Paul is dead.

Re:Are The Computers Better

[Spy Handler]

Wrong. I saw lizards in photographs that Mars Rover totally missed.

Re:Are The Computers Better

[penguinoid]

I bet a computer would beat a human at finding computer coded messages in images or sounds which to a human seem like nothing more than static. Hm, this audio file seems like it contains a jpg image of a kitten, said no human ever.

Re:Are The Computers Better

[zAPPzAPP]

That would be because the information is hidden on a level, frequency, or timescale where our brains can not detect it.
Not a fair comparison.

Re:Are The Computers Better

[penguinoid]

I thought the comparison was brains detecting things? It would be unfair if the senses could not detect it, unless the comparison was with camera/microphone sensitivity.

Re:Are The Computers Better

[thegarbz]

What makes you think they were "missed"?

Re:Are The Computers Better

[thegarbz]

I would bet against you with a large sum. The only way a computer would know this is if it could identify what part of the pattern constitutes the encoded data and what part constitutes the background "noise". For that it would need to know what noise looks like, and what the pattern looks like.

To extend this with an example. If you rename a JPEG without an extension you would need to find some evidence of a file being a JPEG in the first place. It won't get this from the raw data stream unless it is looking and comparing for an exact signature of a JPEG file and even them I'm sceptical if it could identify the encoding without any metadata as the computer would need to know what a picture of a kitten looks like, compared to say random noise it would get on a failed attempt to decode. By extension to the other side of the problem, even if I AM A JPEG was expressly written in the metadata that could be easily hidden within the audio file and a computer would never identify it because it would need to know what is audio and what is not.

Computers can only look for structured patterns these patterns need to be defined by a person up front. This is how computers can look for words and get creepy meaning from the bible proving that the world will end on a day of the operator's choosing. But you can't feed it a song and have it spit back at you: There's a JPEG in here, without feeding it a known clean song to compare.

Re:Are The Computers Better

[rgbatduke]

Are you trying to tell me that the burned patch on my toast isn't a divinely placed image of Jesus, part of a message intended for Me Alone to help me Believe?

Next you will tell me that the clouds aren't really full of fluffy little sheep being eaten by equally fluffy sharks.

You brute.

rgb

Re:Are The Computers Better

[The-Ixian]

I AM A JPEG

Best. Costume. Idea. Ever.

It's called IMAGINATION.

[SeaFox]

Humans have creativity to interpret visual and audio input in ways a computer would fail to do. They can think "outside the box" of ways information would attempt to be transmitted and find patterns a computer would miss. This also means they are more likely to have a false-positive for the message. The easiest example of this is a person who thinks they "heard voices" in background noise from equipment or closed rooms.

Giving a computer the ability to match this would require at least programming every imaginable pattern interpretation method in existence -- something I don't think the machine makers would be able to accomplish.

Computers aren't paranoid?

[pubwvj]

So what I hear you saying is that humans are better at being paranoid than computers... An interesting theory. And how do you feel about the upcoming singularity?

Re:Computers aren't paranoid?

[rogoshen1]

I mean the actions of Skynet prove that machines are just about as paranoid as humans. check mate friendo.

Re:Computers aren't paranoid?

[tinkerton]

Computers are just as paranoid as people, but they don't mean anything by it.

I bet computers are good at this too

[PacoSuarez]

I am sure you can train a neural network (either convolutional or recurrent would probably do) to read that display as well as any human. This doesn't even seem challenging.

Re:I bet computers are good at this too

[KGIII]

That might be true but, and this is a question - I don't know, wouldn't you have to retrain it for new information such as new patterns where a human would not need training (necessarily) to be able to do the same when the patterns changed?

adaptability

[turkeydance]

and horseshoes. digital has two options. brain is "closest counts".

Wha??

[Dan East]

So I'm a software developer and an amateur radio operator, and I still have no idea what the point of that article was (besides the fact that Hellschreiber starts with "hell" and apparently the author found that to be terrifically funny or clever or something).

Re:Wha??

[mikael]

That's almost the opposite of the predecessor of morse code. Originally a telegram was transmitted by writing the letters out in a scan-line fashion. But most of the time, the operators could immediately recognize which letter was coming through after just a couple of scanlines, so the rest of the transmission was redundant (much like viewing text on a GUI window that is only partially visible at the bottom of the frame).

No surprise

[penguinoid]

Computers still struggle at finding messages and especially meaning in clear, coherent sentences.

Re:No surprise

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

i no rite? dumb 'puters reely r two stoopid too under-stand our complexeted human speach.

It's a Newtonian life

[rmdingler]

In exchange for excelling at one thing, there is a facet of that skill that impairs one's ability at something else.

No two leaves or snowflakes are exactly the same, making one of any two better suited for some things than another.

Re:Sometimes ...

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Life.

[EzInKy]

For humans the inability to do so means the difference between life and death. For machines, all a mistake means is a reboot.

Your claim requires proof.

[dsmatthews9379]

I'd like to see proof that current neural networks are worse than humans at decoding noisy hellschreiber messages, because CAPTCHAs have moved away from those sorts of distortions.

No surprise

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

That's pretty much all our brains do- trying to find patterns in an overwhelming deluge of sensory information, hoping to find something meaningful that it can use in some way. Seriously, that's what our brains spend most of their time doing, day in and day out.

We're highly-tuned to find some patterns and not other. And we're also prone to "finding" patterns where there actually aren't any, like "seeing" faces in almost everything we look at (like in building facades, patterns in tree bark, seeing the Virgin Mary in rust stains, etc etc etc).

Re:Ok puny unidentifiable ac troll - a challenge

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Schmuck- all your spamming here has ever done is make me determined that I'll never use any of your crap-ass software.

And if I ever saw anyone using it (or contemplating using it), I'd talk them out of it. After all, who wants to support a scumbag spammer like you?

A$1M0V

[PopeRatzo]

Doesn't this story basically describe why captcha is still effective?

Re:A$1M0V

[Obfuscant]

And ignores the fact that Hellschreiber was invented in the late 1920's. We're reinventing 90 year old technology. Oh, wait, "facsimile ... on a computer!". Got it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

It all makes sense now...

[Marginal Coward]

"Human Brain Still Beats Computers At Finding Messages and Meaning Within Noise?" That must explain why I keep tuning in here at /., whereas my Bot's favorite place to waste time is Ashley Madison...

Eh?

[wonkey_monkey]

The Hellschreiber is a communications device which has no idea whatsoever what the message actually is.

So just like a telephone, or a fax machine, or a TV...

Re:Eh?

[bromoseltzer]

Hellschreiber *is* a type of fax service -- stripped down for use with simple equipment and a noisy communication channel. It has been around for a very long time. Why are we suddenly rediscovering it?

pareidolia

[aepervius]

We human excel at finding specific shapes, like a human shape or face. Change the shape , like to number and letter , and we are far less good as show the problem people also have with captcha. Get a random shape, and computer will *excel* way over human to decide where it should go. So I would argue that our "finding shape out of random noise" is actually much more specialized than surmised.

Hey /. stop logging me out :(

[Chuffpole]

It's no good giving me mod points every couple of days hoping I'll moderate, if you keep logging me out all the time!

I'm logged in on the home page, but when I open stories in separate tabs most of them are logged out. Developers.Slashdot is one of the few that still seems OK.

When you're done messing about with breaking things on older Firefoxes (yes I'm on v3 on Mint 7 but no reason to upgrade when it mostly still works), please fix this. Thanks. Happy 2016.

Not infallible

[RogueWarrior65]

People also see bigotry where none exists. People are easily fooled.

Re:Hey /. stop logging me out :(

[The-Ixian]

This has been happening to me all week.

I am using IE 11 (at work).