Facebook already has access to a larger repository of photos going back over a decade and all the years inbetween along with decent face recognition to create a much bigger dataset than resorting to a hashtag challenge. But I guess that wouldn't be newsworthy.
Facebook already has access to a larger repository of photos going back over a decade and all the years inbetween along with decent face recognition to create a much bigger dataset than resorting to a hashtag challenge. But I guess that wouldn't be newsworthy.
This was addressed in the article:
In various versions of the meme, people were instructed to post their first profile picture alongside their current profile picture, or a picture from 10 years ago alongside their current profile picture. So, yes: These profile pictures exist, they’ve got upload time stamps, many people have a lot of them, and for the most part they’re publicly accessible.
But let's play out this idea.
Imagine that you wanted to train a facial recognition algorithm on age-related characteristics and, more specifically, on age progression (e.g., how people are likely to look as they get older). Ideally, you'd want a broad and rigorous dataset with lots of people's pictures. It would help if you knew they were taken a fixed number of years apart—say, 10 years.
...
In other words, it would help if you had a clean, simple, helpfully labeled set of then-and-now photos.
I know that Facebook's actions mean that it no longer deserves the benefit of the doubt but this seems like a non story that someone really wants to be a story.
Thinking about it lest say 10,000 people respond, is that even enough data to move the needle? Which photo do you use for the old vs recent? There is alot of cleanup that manually needs to be done for this to be a decent data set. Basic common sense says this is a non story.
I did my post undergrad research in 2000 in neural nets and the data sets were our biggest limiting factor, second was computation time. 10,000 data points was a huge set back then and still wasn't enough for most tasks.
"My flippant tweet began to pick up traction. My intent wasn't to claim that the meme is inherently dangerous."
He spun an offhand comment into full-on opinion manipulation, because we're now reading his article on the topic that not only has a clickbait headline, it seems to imply there's something more to the story, when in fact there isn't.
So now we've got all this digital ink spilled on the (entirely hypothetical) topic, and plenty of eyeballs buying it with their attention. But all of it is vapor, even at the admission of the authors.
The issue with internet nowadays to be honest. As soon as you got a bit of traction with a tweet or with a blog post people try to milk it in order to market themselves or other narcissistic interests.
You are replying to an article written by someone named "Kate O'Neill", in which they include a photograph of themselves via Twitter, and you are referring to them as "he"?
Facebook and Google's facial recognition software is so advanced that they have no real use for photos of people explicitly tagged 10 years apart.
Google Photos has been able to track my goddaughter from literally her first photo (when she looked like an alien) to now (5 years later), with about 2 photos per year.
The subtle point here is that people have became so suspicious of these platforms that everything they do is observed with a sharper eye on privacy, speaking of which... I wonder how Portal is doing?
A funny trend I've been seeing is posts from /r/conspiracy being mined by journalists for their stories. This exact idea was posted a few days ago to Reddit, and is not this tech writer's idea.
Reporters combing Reddit for story ideas has been going on for years and years. Heck, it might be worth an experiment to see how quickly someone can start from scratch and put together a portfolio of clips this way. The pitches practically come prewritten.
This research has been in existence for over a decade[1]. Clearly this would be a valuable dataset, but as others have mentioned, Facebook has probably the most valuable dataset. Realistically, the biggest hurdle in modelling aging is in children. The bones/muscles/everything are so elastic that it makes it difficult to accurately predict how they will look. The primary use for this tech has been for catching high-valued individuals that have gone in hiding or children kidnapped into human trafficking (hence the focus on modeling child face growth).
This entire thing sounds more like someone made a joke about "Big Brother always watching" and people without a real understanding of what's possible freaked out when they realized it is.
This is idle speculation from somebody who has no idea what they're talking about. Because it was published on Wired it has gone viral.
It's just technical enough that most people who don't have a clue think that it might be right so they spread it.
Anyone who knows about data processing, programming, or AI knows that it's a very stupid idea due to easy-to-implement fault tolerance (such as random dropout) in machine learning models.
This seems more likely to be a marketing move to me than a covert request for AI training data. They’re struggling with engagement, so they seeded the 10 Year Challenge causing users to invoke the powerful emotion of nostalgia, made easy thanks to Facebook keeping all of your photos safe ;)
This is saying a lot about what people think of Facebook these days. I don’t believe that FB wants to gather data here. This is probably an idea coming from their marketing department. But hey, why would you not think they’re evil after everything they’ve done?
What I like about this tweet is that society starts changing and realizing what possible things could be done with information that is shared. Good to see more critical thinking evolve when it comes to social media.
[+] [-] flocial|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reaperducer|7 years ago|reply
This was addressed in the article:
In various versions of the meme, people were instructed to post their first profile picture alongside their current profile picture, or a picture from 10 years ago alongside their current profile picture. So, yes: These profile pictures exist, they’ve got upload time stamps, many people have a lot of them, and for the most part they’re publicly accessible.
But let's play out this idea.
Imagine that you wanted to train a facial recognition algorithm on age-related characteristics and, more specifically, on age progression (e.g., how people are likely to look as they get older). Ideally, you'd want a broad and rigorous dataset with lots of people's pictures. It would help if you knew they were taken a fixed number of years apart—say, 10 years.
...
In other words, it would help if you had a clean, simple, helpfully labeled set of then-and-now photos.
[+] [-] matchagaucho|7 years ago|reply
Their "how old" facial analysis app has been around a few years and is remarkably accurate.
https://www.how-old.net/
[+] [-] macintux|7 years ago|reply
* themselves
* 10 years old
[+] [-] corobo|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 0xfffff|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JaleDarvis|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chollida1|7 years ago|reply
https://twitter.com/facebook/status/1085675097766031360?ref_...
and rebuttal.
I know that Facebook's actions mean that it no longer deserves the benefit of the doubt but this seems like a non story that someone really wants to be a story.
Thinking about it lest say 10,000 people respond, is that even enough data to move the needle? Which photo do you use for the old vs recent? There is alot of cleanup that manually needs to be done for this to be a decent data set. Basic common sense says this is a non story.
I did my post undergrad research in 2000 in neural nets and the data sets were our biggest limiting factor, second was computation time. 10,000 data points was a huge set back then and still wasn't enough for most tasks.
[+] [-] opless|7 years ago|reply
It's probably many many more times that about three times the magnitude.
It might be a bit of a noisy dataset now that it's a meme.
[+] [-] matte_black|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] thatguyagain|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 0xfffff|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 0xfffff|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] crsmithdev|7 years ago|reply
He spun an offhand comment into full-on opinion manipulation, because we're now reading his article on the topic that not only has a clickbait headline, it seems to imply there's something more to the story, when in fact there isn't.
So now we've got all this digital ink spilled on the (entirely hypothetical) topic, and plenty of eyeballs buying it with their attention. But all of it is vapor, even at the admission of the authors.
[+] [-] warp_factor|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] avree|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 40acres|7 years ago|reply
Google Photos has been able to track my goddaughter from literally her first photo (when she looked like an alien) to now (5 years later), with about 2 photos per year.
The subtle point here is that people have became so suspicious of these platforms that everything they do is observed with a sharper eye on privacy, speaking of which... I wonder how Portal is doing?
[+] [-] colordrops|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rhizome|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tw1010|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tsumnia|7 years ago|reply
This entire thing sounds more like someone made a joke about "Big Brother always watching" and people without a real understanding of what's possible freaked out when they realized it is.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/can-y...
[+] [-] tw1010|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] feelix|7 years ago|reply
It's just technical enough that most people who don't have a clue think that it might be right so they spread it.
Anyone who knows about data processing, programming, or AI knows that it's a very stupid idea due to easy-to-implement fault tolerance (such as random dropout) in machine learning models.
[+] [-] jamespetercook|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justapassenger|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rzzzt|7 years ago|reply
Also, is it hard to figure out the origins of a meme? Lots of them are categorized and researched pretty well already.
[+] [-] baxtr|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ozgurozkan|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] itchyjunk|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oth001|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kerng|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ngcc_hk|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aaron695|7 years ago|reply
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