Biennale explores hidden world of facial recognition
Print Edition
DON’T judge by appearances. It’s an age-old piece of advice that is being roundly ignored by corporations, governments and law-enforcement agencies around the globe.
British police use facial-recognition technology to scan crowds for suspects.
Owners of the latest iPhones can unlock their phones with face ID. Whole Foods and other retailers are testing facial recognition as a way of eliminating check-out tills in stores.
Modern technology means your face is both your identity and a commodity — but as an exhibition going on display in London shows, that technology is far from perfect.
“Face Values,” the US entry at the multinational London Design Biennale, explores how computers’ ability to read faces is changing the world, with implications for privacy and individuality that we still don’t fully understand.
Curated by New York’s Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, “Face Values” includes two interactive pieces that explore the scope and limits of what technology can learn about you from your face.
Artist and computer programmer Zachary Lieberman invites visitors to sit in front of a screen as a computer maps their expressions, compares them to others’ and produces an analysis of the sitter’s emotion.
The limits of such technology become clearer in the accompanying piece by R. Luke DuBois, director of the Brooklyn Experimental Media Center at New York University’s engineering school.
Visitors sit in front of a screen and are asked to display a specific emotion. Using technology similar to that deployed by some police forces, the system calculates the individual’s age, gender, race and emotional state. The results are both intrusive and sometimes inaccurate.
One visitor, attempting to project calmness, registered as afraid. Another, asked to look disgusted, was told she appeared happy.
DuBois said the technology is only as good as the data that goes into it — and the sets of images that companies and organizations use to compare emotions are often inadequate.
The Design Biennale, which runs through September 23 at London’s Somerset House, includes exhibits from 40 countries, cities and territories under the loose theme “Emotional States.”
(AP)
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
