October 8, 2007: Age/sex cam

[Undertoad]

It's the Monday Neatorama collaboration image!



The cameras are getting smarter. First they only had to identify what was a face. Then they started comparing faces to find matches. Now they're figuring out what the faces actually are. The official caption from the Mainichi Daily News:

A computer screen displays the sex and age of people as determined by face-recognition software developed by Omron Corp. at the CEATEC technology trade show in Chiba, Japan October 2, 2007. The Japanese text reads: (L to R) "Woman 20-39 years, Man 20-39 years, Man 20-39 years".

The human brain is set up to recognize facial patterns in images, which is why we look at smilies and see them as faces. When you look at a crowd, you are pre-programmed to find subtle differences in faces, so that even though all faces are very similar, you can instantly pick out family and friends. That's what makes this new technology so striking; more than ever, technology is encroaching on humanity.

But I guess you'd expect that to happen - because humans are programming the software to do what they want to do themselves. After all, in anonymous chat the first question is usually "A/S/L?" - shorthand for "what is your age, gender, and location?", so that the chatters can identify with each other, or at least each other's fake identity. These are the things we want to know about each other, if we are starting from nothing.

Be sure to visit our friends at Neatorama for more neato items all the time!