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Would Facebook's facial recognition work as well in an airport or train station scenario? It is definitely an easier problem to recognize one face out of a few

Would Facebook's facial recognition work as well in an airport or train station scenario? It is definitely an easier problem to recognize one face out of a few hundred or few thousand (your friends) than it is to globally match across their entire database.

jitbit 10y ago
Well, considering all the computing power they have (more than 100k servers across dozens of datacenters - and that data is from 2010) this is not a problem. Hell, they can even quickly detect copyright infringement a posted video right? Ever posted a video with some background music? I don't think computing power is a problem...
- DennisP 10y ago
  The problem isn't computing power, it's algorithm accuracy. If there are thousands of people who are a close-enough match to your face, then when they see your face in a random crowd at a train station, they don't know which of those people you are. To fix this they'd probably need other heuristics, which for all I know they're already using. An easy one would be to narrow it down by location, though sometimes that'd be wrong. A more sophisticated method would be to build a model of human movement, keep track of locations where they have high confidence it's you (e.g. in pics of you in small groups with your friends) and combine these into an estimate of the probability of each candidate match being at the train station.
  - dreamfactory2 10y ago
    There are companies who are selling tech that will recognise a person rapidly walking past in a conference crowd (had it demoed to me), so yes the tech is definitely capable now
    - DennisP 10y ago
      That's still a small population to choose from.
Terribledactyl 10y ago
They wouldn't have to match globally across their entire dataset. Check your messages before/after landing, maybe post something like "lol, guess I'm going to Madrid". Governments know you flight and boarder activity, financial institutions would know your purchase history. You've just eliminated a large amount of possible faces.

jitbit 10y ago

Well, considering all the computing power they have (more than 100k servers across dozens of datacenters - and that data is from 2010) this is not a problem. Hell, they can even quickly detect copyright infringement a posted video right? Ever posted a video with some background music? I don't think computing power is a problem...

DennisP 10y ago
The problem isn't computing power, it's algorithm accuracy. If there are thousands of people who are a close-enough match to your face, then when they see your face in a random crowd at a train station, they don't know which of those people you are. To fix this they'd probably need other heuristics, which for all I know they're already using. An easy one would be to narrow it down by location, though sometimes that'd be wrong. A more sophisticated method would be to build a model of human movement, keep track of locations where they have high confidence it's you (e.g. in pics of you in small groups with your friends) and combine these into an estimate of the probability of each candidate match being at the train station.
- dreamfactory2 10y ago
  There are companies who are selling tech that will recognise a person rapidly walking past in a conference crowd (had it demoed to me), so yes the tech is definitely capable now
  - DennisP 10y ago
    That's still a small population to choose from.

Terribledactyl 10y ago

They wouldn't have to match globally across their entire dataset. Check your messages before/after landing, maybe post something like "lol, guess I'm going to Madrid". Governments know you flight and boarder activity, financial institutions would know your purchase history. You've just eliminated a large amount of possible faces.