Computer Taught To Recognize Attractiveness In Women

[Political Heretic]

Funny, but also very interesting article on the evolution of AI


Computer Taught To Recognize Attractiveness In Women
ScienceDaily (Apr. 5, 2008) — "Beauty," goes the old saying, "is in the eye of the beholder." But does the beholder have to be human?

Not necessarily, say scientists at Tel Aviv University. Amit Kagian, an M.Sc. graduate from the TAU School of Computer Sciences, has successfully "taught" a computer how to interpret attractiveness in women. But there's a more serious dimension to this issue that reaches beyond mere vanity. The discovery is a step towards developing artificial intelligence in computers. Other applications for the software could be in plastic and reconstructive surgery and computer visualization programs such as face recognition technologies.

In the first step of the study, 30 men and women were presented with 100 different faces of Caucasian women, roughly of the same age, and were asked to judge the beauty of each face. The subjects rated the images on a scale of 1 through 7 and did not explain why they chose certain scores. Kagian and his colleagues then went to the computer and processed and mapped the geometric shape of facial features mathematically.

Additional features such as face symmetry, smoothness of the skin and hair color were fed into the analysis as well. Based on human preferences, the machine "learned" the relation between facial features and attractiveness scores and was then put to the test on a fresh set of faces.

Says Kagian, "The computer produced impressive results -- its rankings were very similar to the rankings people gave." This is considered a remarkable achievement, believes Kagian, because it's as though the computer "learned" implicitly how to interpret beauty through processing previous data it had received.

[jgraz]

1. Yawn -- I can already do that

They should be working on a program that recognizes passive-aggressiveness in women. Or one that tells you if they have annoying ex-boyfriends hanging about.

[readmoreoften]

13. Hmmm passive aggressive. Well, I mean, if that's what you want to think about women go ahead.

No, it's cool. I know a lot of guys think that way about women. I just didn't expect you to be one of them. Ya know? No, it's cool. I'm fine. I said, I'm FINE. Why are you apologizing. I SAID I'M FINE!

And honey, it's your turn to fold the laundry. I can't do it this time. I have carpal tunnel from doing it the last three times. And the carpal tunnel really hurts.

[jgraz]

14. Um...why is my computer beeping?

[MercutioATC]

2. I wonder if the "Golden Ratio" is part of the programming.

http://math.suite101.com/article.cfm/the_golden_ratio

"Most people surely don’t realize that a rectangle with sides of 8 inches and 12.944271912 has been mathematically more pleasing to the eye than, say, a rectangle with sides of 5 inches and 10 inches? While it may sound farfetched to believe that aesthetics are so intimately related so such a thing as the size of a rectangle, rest assured that, for some strange reason, it happens to be unavoidably true.

While scientists have been unable to determine exactly what it is that makes a rectangle of this size more palatable than other sizes from a neurological perspective, they have at least been able to explain it mathematically.

Mathematicians call this phenomenon the Golden Ratio (often denoted in mathematics by the Greek symbol “phi” – j), and, as such, the rectangle previously described would be considered a Golden Rectangle. The Golden Ratio is slightly easier to understand if one considers a line divided into two segments; a long segment (A) and a short segment (B).

This remarkable ratio occurs when the ratio of A to B is equal to the ratio of the entire line (A+B) to the longer segment (A). Perhaps this seems complicated, but only until one actually takes the time to draw these line segments and get a visual perspective of this.

In other words, the rectangle described above is a golden rectangle because the ratio of the length of the short side to the length of the long side is exactly equal to the ratio between both of them put together to the length of the long side. In exact terms, this “golden” ratio between the sides of the rectangle is 1.618033989. Exactly."

[Quantess]

3. How interesting that a similar study was not done on men's faces.

How predictable.

[DavidDvorkin]

5. You may be jumping to a false conclusion

The report says this at the end:

Nonetheless, the experiment only involved women's faces, as there is a greater variety of positions regarding male beauty.


Link here: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/966854.html



(By "positions" I assume they really mean parameters.)

[aquart]

11. "Positions"?

Does that mean it depends on where you look? Like, say, down?

[Political Heretic]

10. I believe the choice to start with women's face was more technical than sexist

Maybe not, but at the end of the article it sounds like the conditions for testing were more complicated for men's faces. If this is an early stage experiment, it makes sense to start with one, and to start with whichever one you can do with the least parameters.

[Quantess]

15. Well, of course it makes sense to do with the least parameters,

or anything else that might justify beginning your study in the way that you think is the right way to be done!

Men's faces are more complicated? Says who?

I don't think so.

[Political Heretic]

18. Sadly, I doubt its mens faces that is more complicated-its that mens reactions are LESS complicated

lol...

Hate to say it, but its probably that the parameters of gaging mens responses were much less complicated. :P

[DavidDvorkin]

4. But this assumes that those parameters are what the humans were also using to judge beauty

If the human beings were basing their judgments on other things, then the machine might not agree with humans in the case of a larger sample.

[Political Heretic]

9. Right. My first thought as well. Still.....

...a computer being able to organized and execute these sort of judgments, even if the programing reflects essentially a "copy" of an average subset of individual preferences, is still pretty cool.

[readmoreoften]

12. Too bad beauty involves love and admiration.

My girlfriend has the most beautiful face in the world but I doubt the computer would rank it properly.

[Quantess]

16. And I have a handsome boyfriend, but the computer doesn't give a fig!

Not that I care what the computer says about a man's face, about my guy's face or whether it's attractive. I KNOW he is an attractive man, and I KNOW I am an attractive woman.

[Beregond2]

6. well,

that's more than I've ever been able to do...

[Guaranteed]

7. Then it should also be able to create the "most" attractive face possible.

Alright, HAL, let's see it.

http://www.itousa.com/images/Ugly!.jpg

[Quantess]

17. The "ape" in us wants to see the most attractive female face!

[dweller]

8. still GIGO

This is considered a remarkable achievement, believes Kagian, because it's as though the computer "learned" implicitly how to interpret beauty through processing previous data it had received.

a rose is a rose.
dp