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Facebook machine learning technology improves; Redditors alaramed.

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Re: Facebook machine learning technology improves; Redditors alaramed.

#71

Post by DanielBMarkham »

Years ago I worked with a guy who used to sell computer equipment to businesses.

He told me that when he went to different divisions in each company, they all had org/structure charts somewhere around the office. And in every one of them, their section was in the middle and everybody else was serviced by them. No matter what you did, you were the center of the universe to you.

Likewise, I've had experience building and working on many computer systems for businesses. Each of them, if successful, wants to handle not just their thing but everything for their customers. No matter what they did, they wanted to be the center of the universe for their customers.

You can laugh at these examples, and we all know most software companies have much great ambition than they do traction, but Facebook and Google are actually doing this. They are becoming the center of the information universe to their customers.

This is not a good thing.

Re: Facebook machine learning technology improves; Redditors alaramed.

#72

Post by finnw »

jfoster wrote: post #43

A test that might fool this. You will need: 1. A facebook status update/checkin/access from a particular location. 2. A photo taken without EXIF data at around the same time as the update/checkin/access above, but from a completely different location. Upload the photo using your facebook account. Check whether they get the location right. If yes, the mystery continues. If no, but the location is somewhere other than…

I think I'll set the date on my camera to 1911. A human seeing the timestamp on the picture will just assume its a Y2K bug and will guess the correct data. Since that's extremely unlikely IRL, the Facebook algorithm probably won't know to make this correction.

Re: Facebook machine learning technology improves; Redditors alaramed.

#73

Post by jsaxton86 »

drats wrote: post #24

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale-invariant_feature_transfo... Facebook almost certainly has more photo information than TinEye or Flickr, and of indoor environments probably more than Google (which has reverse image search too). Across any given bar or hospital Facebook would have maybe 5-10 other people with albums tagged with the name/gps/check-in. They'd only need one other album though. SIFT more or less turns…

If I were to take a picture of a baby at a hospital, wouldn't the majority of the features be of the baby, not the hospital? I suppose if there's at least one picture in the album that's of the actual hospital, that's probably all you would need to infer the rest of the set was taken at the same hospital.

Re: Facebook machine learning technology improves; Redditors alaramed.

#74

Post by pbhjpbhj »

phpnode wrote: post #37
pud wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your opinion, how would Facebook know your location if you never logged in from a GPS-enabled smart phone? (and never approved an HTML5 geo permission request on your laptop). That's the interesting question here.

well they can do a best guess based on the location of your IP, even if you only sign into facebook once while you're travelling. The really interesting question is: can they do this even if you have not signed into facebook at all on your travels, or for totally new accounts with no location history at all. If they can, then they must be doing image recognition in some way. Perhaps someone who has more time / energy…

Facebook knows more about me than I do. I'd be interested in their history file of my location.

Re: Facebook machine learning technology improves; Redditors alaramed.

#75

Post by iradik »

drats wrote: post #24

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale-invariant_feature_transfo... Facebook almost certainly has more photo information than TinEye or Flickr, and of indoor environments probably more than Google (which has reverse image search too). Across any given bar or hospital Facebook would have maybe 5-10 other people with albums tagged with the name/gps/check-in. They'd only need one other album though. SIFT more or less turns…

It's not that sophisticated. It's a picture of a baby being taken at a hospital.

There's probably hundreds of photos of babies being taken with GPS from that hosptial.

FB image recognition probably thinks all these babies are the same "person".

Then a separate system comes along and takes photos that do not have location info and tries to match them up with ones that do. It finds a match with the "hospital baby" and then asks for verification. Person says YES and it adds that baby to the "hospital baby" pool as well.

Re: Facebook machine learning technology improves; Redditors alaramed.

#76

Post by berntb »

JonnieCache wrote: post #19

The important thing to take away from this: If they can make guesses this accurate about your photos, imagine they guesses they're making behind the scenes about your life, your personality and your innermost thoughts. If there was a page on fb where it showed all the inferences they had made about you, sexuality, income, religion, philosophical viewpoints, mental health, etc. then people would run screaming. Of cour…

I hope they don't lose this info. What a boon for researchers in some distant future!

(The problem, of course, is that a "distant future" today is 10-20 years... Probably even in my lifetime.)

Re: Facebook machine learning technology improves; Redditors alaramed.

#77

Post by brown9-2 »

Ignoring the how of this new feature, what is the upside to me as a user of confirming to Facebook the hospital in which my child was born?

Why do they think people would generally be interested in clicking "Yes" on these suggestions? That they are helpfully filling in the blanks on photos I "forgot" to location-tag?

Re: Facebook machine learning technology improves; Redditors alaramed.

#78

Post by pbhjpbhj »

yogrish wrote: post #25

Wow! A serious competitor to SIRI in place. My guess is they are using combination of techniques - Semantics of your Status as phpnode mentioned with example(heard they have plans to get into semantic search to beat google), EXIF info, IP address and also your friends replies - when is the due? which hospital or Gynic? If hospital name is not mentioned then Gynics details and her hospital location. Do you think all t…

If image info that users wish to enter can be guessed well this reduces friction substantially. Having this info makes FB a more valuable marketing tool. Why not make such suggestions.

Re: Facebook machine learning technology improves; Redditors alaramed.

#79

Post by yaix »

darklajid wrote: post #41

Immature, but I really loved this comment/idea and wonder about the feasibility of such attacks: "You know what this means: Time to rewrite your EXIF info and location bomb the hell out of popular attractions. Eiffel Tower in Paris? Nope, it's in Iowa ..." [1] Possible? Google bomb with a twist? 1: http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/nkktm/facebook_is_reall...

Yep, it would be good to show that this kind of data is not reliable and easily manipulated. But probably it will not happen.

Re: Facebook machine learning technology improves; Redditors alaramed.

#80

Post by missing_cipher »

freedompeace wrote: post #2

How could Facebook do this (technologically)? According to a redditor, " - It's not IP address . Facebook successfully identified a number of specific locations (bars, theaters, etc) even though I had uploaded the photos from my home - It's not geo-tagging . All of my photos were taken with a camera that does not geo-tag (Nikon d700). - It's not contextual tagging . There were no people tagged in the photos, no comme…

Could be as simple as figuring out that the picture is a baby, get the user's location and then find near-by hospitals. Then ask if the guess is right.
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