In a world constantly growing in technological advances, researchers use all kinds of progressive methods to study the field of science. One interesting observation by several scientists involves comparing the brain to a computer, both essentially functioning through a series of networks, connections, and “wiring.” This noteworthy comparison could be taken to the next level, and after reading Cade Metz’s article “Facial Recognition Tech Is Growing Stronger, Thanks to Your Face” in the New York Times, it’s possible technology recognizes faces in a similar processing system as the brain. The article outlines the complex ways in which tech companies, such as Google and Facebook, have been compiling data about people’s faces everyday for more than a decade, allowing the computer to recognize specific details about facial features and becoming an expert on distinguishing one face from another. Metz discussed how the technology analyzes pictures using “neural networks,” which are complex mathematical systems that require vast amounts of data to build pattern recognition. The simple fact that this system is named after the extensive networking of the brain reiterates the similarities between these two processing centers.
Greg Reynolds, a professor at the University of Tennessee, does research on facial recognition in infants, examining how they begin to develop the skills to recognize faces. In one of his published papers, “The Development of Attentional Biases for Faces in Infancy: A Developmental Systems Perspective,” he finds that newborn infants show a preference for face-like stimuli over non-face stimuli, suggesting the ability of the newborn brain to detect facial features well enough that they can distinguish a face from something that is not a face. In this sense, a computer most likely uses “similar” processing systems and feature-recognition in order to collect data about facial constructs.
Metz, Cade. “Facial Recognition Tech Is Growing Stronger, Thanks to Your Face.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 13 July 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/07/13/technology/databases-faces-facial-recognition-technology.html?searchResultPosition=3.
Reynolds G, Roth K. The Development of Attentional Biases for Faces in Infancy: A Developmental Systems Perspective. Front. Psychol., 28 February 2018. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00222
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