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If I'm reading this correctly, they showed a series of pictures, one at a time, and told people to focus on faces that they found attractive. They then recorded

If I'm reading this correctly, they showed a series of pictures, one at a time, and told people to focus on faces that they found attractive. They then recorded EEG data to generate a score of perceived attractiveness, and used it to influence the GAN to make more beautiful faces. This is a very weird approach. If the goal is to personalize attractive faces, you could just have subjects rate pictures on a scale of 1-100. If you want to test EEG ratings of attractiveness, you should just compare manual ratings to EEG ratings without prompting them to focus on attractive faces. In all likelihood, the EEG has no idea if you think a particular face is attractive. They've just trained the AI to recognize when a user is focusing intently vs. not. Which is still kind of cool, but much less interesting than the headline suggests.

meowface 6y ago
>If you want to test EEG ratings of attractiveness, you should just compare manual ratings to EEG ratings without prompting them to focus on attractive faces. Yeah, as you say, it'd be very interesting if it could first associate self-reports of attractiveness with EEG activity, and then know roughly how attractive you consider someone based solely on blind EEG data. Then reverse the process by generating lots of faces and picking the one that someone seems to be most attracted to purely based on their EEG. (This is what I initially thought the study would be doing.) I suspect there would be major challenges with this, though. Besides EEG data possibly being too coarse, it's possible that what happens in the brain when you see someone you find attractive is very complicated and multifaceted. I think "attractiveness" may not be a single metric along a gradient even for a single individual's brain, let alone among a population. So even training on each person individually might not be that fruitful. For example, you may find two different people attractive due to a mix of reasons - some shared reasons, and some differing reasons. I'd guess the brain activity might differ in some ways in those cases. Maybe also even while looking at different photos of the same person, or even the same photo at different times. I know people tend to go through hormone cycles throughout the day; it's possible activity (as well as subjective attractiveness perception at a given time) may differ depending on what phase of a cycle you're in, or food, coffee, or alcohol you've had recently, etc. But who knows, maybe there often is some consistent pattern of activity which would serve as a decent proxy for overall attractiveness perception, if it could just be sifted out of the noise. This is probably just extremely difficult to do with current technology and neuroscience understanding, even if it may be feasible in theory. I'm sure we'll see more things like that in the coming decades.
Blikkentrekker 6y ago
This was also my takeway. The indirection of focusing on more attractive faces seems to purely exist to be able to say that attractiveness response was measured by brains can rather than statements from the subject, which it was not. Actually measuring attractiveness by way of neural response would be quite interesting, as it præcludes an ability to lie. There is some discussion about how much people find attractive what they say they find attractive, and whether or not they are lying and instead are saying what they are expected to find attractive to appear more socially gracious; — such research would be able to compare the difference between what a man says, and what he thinks, which never fails to produce interesting contrasts.
- jmmcd 6y ago
  The EEG is just a gimmick, indeed.
- dane-pgp 6y ago
  > the difference between what a man says, and what he thinks, which never fails to produce interesting contrasts. "Demure, aggressive, sleazy? Be honest." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJXx9HE2Rm4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJXx9HE2Rm4
jmmcd 6y ago
> If the goal is to personalize attractive faces, you could just have subjects rate pictures on a scale of 1-100. However, research in the field (the field here is really "interactive genetic algorithms") suggests that it's more efficient/better HCI to allow selection rather than numerical rating, in order to choose the "parents" of the next generation. So, the right way to do this would be a typical interactive GA, using a mouse. Or eye-tracking, for lazy users.
- klmadfejno 6y ago
  In what way is this a genetic algorithm? When I think genetic algorithms, I imagine biologically inspired non-linear optimization algorithms. That feels like its possibly relevant, but more of a choice of technique than the main idea at play here. Am I wrong?
  - jmmcd 6y ago
    Well, I think they are using a GA, based on: > Machine learning-based algorithms subsequently determined which faces produced the greatest amount of activity for each person, then established which traits those faces had in common. Based on that data, the neural network then proceeded to produce new faces that combined those traits. In particular, it is a reasonably common idea (in the last few years) to use a GA or other metaheuristic to traverse an embedding space. Here, that embedding space is the z layer of the GAN. Especially when "fitness" in the embedding space is purely subjective, it's natural to use an interactive GA. However, I am over-stating it to say that the field is just interactive GA. It's that, intersected with face-GANs.
    - klmadfejno 6y ago
      Wouldn't it just be finding the line of best fit in the embedding space, mapping the embedding of each face to the amount of activity?
      - jmmcd 6y ago
        A line of best fit wouldn't quite make sense to me, as the implication would be that extrapolation on that line would lead to improvements -- forever. A GA allows for iterative generation of multiple faces (no linear assumption) and selection of the best. I don't have access to the article so can't check what they actually did!
Proven 6y ago
What about when the subject won't tell you what they think? The EEG method will work better. And slightly off-topic: personalized fake porn is within our reach. Hooray!
fragmede 6y ago
People lie, especially in matters of attraction - eg it is still not safe (legally or culturally ) to be a homosexual in much of the world (including swaths of the US). Thus the EEG-based “mind reading” approach. There’s still much work to be done, clearly , but “simply asking people” is anything but straightforward.
- LordDragonfang 6y ago
  Except they're asking people to consciously choose the face they're most attracted to and focus "more attention" on it, which still allows the user to lie. It reminds me of that "controlling video games with your mind" [1] gimmick, which was just eye tracking with extra steps, or even those "lift a ball with your mind" headsets that came out as toys a decade ago. [1](https://youtu.be/SMXfyZc_Gvg https://youtu.be/SMXfyZc_Gvg)

meowface 6y ago

>If you want to test EEG ratings of attractiveness, you should just compare manual ratings to EEG ratings without prompting them to focus on attractive faces. Yeah, as you say, it'd be very interesting if it could first associate self-reports of attractiveness with EEG activity, and then know roughly how attractive you consider someone based solely on blind EEG data. Then reverse the process by generating lots of faces and picking the one that someone seems to be most attracted to purely based on their EEG. (This is what I initially thought the study would be doing.) I suspect there would be major challenges with this, though. Besides EEG data possibly being too coarse, it's possible that what happens in the brain when you see someone you find attractive is very complicated and multifaceted. I think "attractiveness" may not be a single metric along a gradient even for a single individual's brain, let alone among a population. So even training on each person individually might not be that fruitful. For example, you may find two different people attractive due to a mix of reasons - some shared reasons, and some differing reasons. I'd guess the brain activity might differ in some ways in those cases. Maybe also even while looking at different photos of the same person, or even the same photo at different times. I know people tend to go through hormone cycles throughout the day; it's possible activity (as well as subjective attractiveness perception at a given time) may differ depending on what phase of a cycle you're in, or food, coffee, or alcohol you've had recently, etc. But who knows, maybe there often is some consistent pattern of activity which would serve as a decent proxy for overall attractiveness perception, if it could just be sifted out of the noise. This is probably just extremely difficult to do with current technology and neuroscience understanding, even if it may be feasible in theory. I'm sure we'll see more things like that in the coming decades.

Blikkentrekker 6y ago

This was also my takeway. The indirection of focusing on more attractive faces seems to purely exist to be able to say that attractiveness response was measured by brains can rather than statements from the subject, which it was not. Actually measuring attractiveness by way of neural response would be quite interesting, as it præcludes an ability to lie. There is some discussion about how much people find attractive what they say they find attractive, and whether or not they are lying and instead are saying what they are expected to find attractive to appear more socially gracious; — such research would be able to compare the difference between what a man says, and what he thinks, which never fails to produce interesting contrasts.

jmmcd 6y ago
The EEG is just a gimmick, indeed.
dane-pgp 6y ago
> the difference between what a man says, and what he thinks, which never fails to produce interesting contrasts. "Demure, aggressive, sleazy? Be honest." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJXx9HE2Rm4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJXx9HE2Rm4

jmmcd 6y ago

> If the goal is to personalize attractive faces, you could just have subjects rate pictures on a scale of 1-100. However, research in the field (the field here is really "interactive genetic algorithms") suggests that it's more efficient/better HCI to allow selection rather than numerical rating, in order to choose the "parents" of the next generation. So, the right way to do this would be a typical interactive GA, using a mouse. Or eye-tracking, for lazy users.

klmadfejno 6y ago
In what way is this a genetic algorithm? When I think genetic algorithms, I imagine biologically inspired non-linear optimization algorithms. That feels like its possibly relevant, but more of a choice of technique than the main idea at play here. Am I wrong?
- jmmcd 6y ago
  Well, I think they are using a GA, based on: > Machine learning-based algorithms subsequently determined which faces produced the greatest amount of activity for each person, then established which traits those faces had in common. Based on that data, the neural network then proceeded to produce new faces that combined those traits. In particular, it is a reasonably common idea (in the last few years) to use a GA or other metaheuristic to traverse an embedding space. Here, that embedding space is the z layer of the GAN. Especially when "fitness" in the embedding space is purely subjective, it's natural to use an interactive GA. However, I am over-stating it to say that the field is just interactive GA. It's that, intersected with face-GANs.
  - klmadfejno 6y ago
    Wouldn't it just be finding the line of best fit in the embedding space, mapping the embedding of each face to the amount of activity?
    - jmmcd 6y ago
      A line of best fit wouldn't quite make sense to me, as the implication would be that extrapolation on that line would lead to improvements -- forever. A GA allows for iterative generation of multiple faces (no linear assumption) and selection of the best. I don't have access to the article so can't check what they actually did!

Proven 6y ago

What about when the subject won't tell you what they think? The EEG method will work better. And slightly off-topic: personalized fake porn is within our reach. Hooray!

fragmede 6y ago

People lie, especially in matters of attraction - eg it is still not safe (legally or culturally ) to be a homosexual in much of the world (including swaths of the US). Thus the EEG-based “mind reading” approach. There’s still much work to be done, clearly , but “simply asking people” is anything but straightforward.

LordDragonfang 6y ago
Except they're asking people to consciously choose the face they're most attracted to and focus "more attention" on it, which still allows the user to lie. It reminds me of that "controlling video games with your mind" [1] gimmick, which was just eye tracking with extra steps, or even those "lift a ball with your mind" headsets that came out as toys a decade ago. [1](https://youtu.be/SMXfyZc_Gvg https://youtu.be/SMXfyZc_Gvg)