Friday, December 12, 2008

What's New(s) in Science

In Aesthetic Expressions, we talked a little bit about the “Beauty Machine” and how a professor at Tel Aviv University programmed a computer to change the features of a human face to make it more attractive. Hearing this really intrigued me and so I went into further research of the topic to do this assignment. The “Beauty Machine” article that we read for Aesthetic Expressions came from Science Daily and so that was where I began my search to find similar articles to that one.

The first article that I found was “Computer Taught to Recognize Attractiveness in Women”, and basically what it talked about was how a scientist at Tel Aviv University, Amit Kagian, taught a computer to identify attractiveness in women. It also said that he could not conduct the same experience for male attractiveness because there is less agreement on what makes a man attractive, and people tend to agree on the features that make women attractive. Kagian surveyed 30 men and women with 100 different faces of Caucasian women, and asked them to judge the attractiveness of the women on a scale of 1 to 7. Given the data collected from the survey, he was able to electronically process and map the geometric shape of facial features mathematically, specifically measuring facial symmetry, the smoothness of the skin, and the color of the hair. Based on the human preferences, the computer “learned” the relation between facial features and attractiveness scores. When put to the test with new faces, the computer did astonishingly well, implying that the computer had been able to learn how to interpret beauty through processing previous data that it had received. The article went on to say that the discovery of this technology in computers is a step towards developing artificial intelligence in computers.

For my second article, I sought to find one that explained what artificial intelligence is and why it’s important. Most of the articles I found on the topic were written in far too advanced a language for me. I am not a scientist and I am not hip to scientific lingo, so I needed to find an article that I could understand to present to the class. Finally, I found an article that was a UCLA publication called "Artificial Intelligence reaches new heights" that focused on how artificial intelligence is already ingrained into our everyday life, and theorized as to what technology could be capable of in the future.

Senior technology strategist student at UCLA, Phillip Duncan, discusses how artificial intelligence is completely ingrained into our lives and how humans are becoming increasingly reliant on it without even realizing it. Among the ways that we use artificial intelligence, he specifically cites machines that authorize credit cards by analyzing a person’s financial history, global positioning systems that identify their owner’s voice, and internet sites that analyze a person’s interests based on their search engine. He goes on to theorize that in the future, computers will learn to communicate electronically (e.g. Responding to emails without input from the owner), develop the ability to answer full questions posted in search engines rather than searching for key words, etc. He makes the suggestion that one day artificial intelligence and computers will go beyond human ability, and will perform without human weaknesses, such as distraction and regeneration modes.

This topic is important to me as a writer major because if computers are one day able to surpass the abilities of humans than they would also be better authors and have a better understanding and use of vocabulary than I do. I think this is an interesting topic because this is a technological world that we live in, and the existence and advancement of artificial intelligence is not something that can be avoided.

Sources:
“Computer taught to recognize attractiveness in women.” 5 April 2008. ScienceDaily.
com. 1 December 2008.

Terzyan, Seda. “Aritificial Intelligence reaching new heights.” 5 November 2008. The Daily Bruin. 8 December 2008.

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