It is understood that the ability
to identify certain objects or scenes as threats is a product of human
evolution. Your brain is hardwired to
recollect and associate real world examples with people or objects that we
understand to be dangerous. In other
words, it keeps you safe.
The Fusiform Gyrus (highlighted above) is the area in the brain responsible for facial recognition.
Have you ever been presented with a
familiar face, clearly recognizable, but lacked the ability to put a name to
it? This phenomenon is known as Recognition
Without Identification (RWI). Dr. Anthony
J. Ryals of Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine recently
spoke to us about his study regarding RWI. He published a research article in
the 2013 edition of the Psychonomic Society
titled “Intuitively Detecting What Is Hidden Within A Visual Mask:
Familiar–Novel Discrimination And Threat Detection For Unidentified Stimuli”. The purpose of his experiment was
to relate RWI to instinctive feelings that manifest when presented with a
specific situation, specifically the instincts associated with threat
detection. For his first experiment, participants were presented with impaired
versions, images that underwent a monochromatic noise filter, of famous and
non-famous faces, 120 images in total.
Their ability to identify each stimulus was analyzed with familiarity
ratings ranging from 1 (very unfamiliar) to 10 (very familiar). The participants were then presented with
non-impaired versions of the same faces and asked to rate how famous that
particular person was, 0 (not famous) to 9 (very famous). The second experiment was performed in the
same manner solely substituting the faces with famous and non-famous locations,
recording familiarity and magnitude of fame, respectively. In the third experiment, the stimuli were
replaced with threatening and nonthreatening images (half living and half
nonliving). The results of this study
indicated that the higher familiarity ratings were given to the famous
faces/locations and the threatening images as opposed to the non-famous and
non-threatening images.
In relation to the real world, the
present study could suffice in the conditioning of law enforcers, in hopes to
understand and improve their abilities to identify certain people as threats,
as this is often the case of life or death.
However, they might not have to anymore. Facial Recognition has developed into a technological tool that
allows its users to gain access to a persons identity solely based on unique,
key points attributed to that persons face.
In this recent NY Times article, “Never Forgetting A Face”, Natasha
Singer writes of Dr. Joseph Atick and describes the advancements and benefits
of delicate face recognition software. Dr.
Atick is one of the foundational developers of facial recognition. He began pitching his work to the government
and fraud companies in the 90’s in hopes to provide a new way of catching
criminals. He speaks on the achievements
of his work, "We saved lives," he said during the conference in mid-March. "We have solved crimes" (Singer, 2014). It is evident that the development of this technology has benefited society in the recent years. Dr. Atick speaks of facial recognition being applied not only nationally, but on a global perspective as well, "The technology is already in use in law enforcement and casinos. In
New York, Pennsylvania and California, police departments with face-recognition
systems can input the image of a robbery suspect taken from a surveillance
video in a bank, for instance, and compare the suspect’s faceprint against
their image gallery of convicted criminals, looking for a match. … In Japan, a few grocery stores use
face-matching to classify some shoppers as shoplifters or even “complainers”
and blacklist them” (Singer, 2014). It
seems as if nothing can go wrong with this new ability, however, Dr. Atick
understands the dangers that can be associated with it. The number one concern is the invasion of
privacy. Simple face identification could
provide all background information surrounding a client. With this new technology on the line, does it
in fact guarantee the safety of the common people? Will the ability to remotely
ping threats improve our lives or endanger them? If human evolution provided us with the
ability to analyze our surrounding for threats, would this new ability hamper
our human instincts? The idea of facial
recognition is a very controversial topic.
In many ways it seems to benefit our society; keeping our streets safe,
identifying wanted criminals from afar, but there will always be that factor of
privacy. Maybe the world isn’t ready to
accept the fact that technology is passing up the human race.
References:
Cleary, Anne M.,
Anthony J. Ryals, and Jason S. Nomi. "Intuitively Detecting What Is Hidden Within A Visual Mask: Familiar–Novel
Discrimination And Threat
Detection For Unidentified Stimuli." (2013) Psychonomic Society.
p989-999.
Singer, Natasha.
"Never Forgetting a Face." (2014) The New York Times. The New York Times.
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