- A Wired columnist believes the ‘10-year-challenge’ social media posts are perfect to teach machines to take ageing into account.
- This can help law enforcement agencies, in countries such as South Africa, catch ageing criminals or find missing children using out-of-date photos.
- Facial recognition is already widely used around the world to catch criminals.
The "10-year-challenge" posts currently trending on social media are ideal learning materials to teach machines to help catch criminals a Wired columnist believes – and those posts could play a role in helping SA find missing children in the future.
The posts, trending on Facebook and Twitter since the beginning of January, asks users to share photos of themselves from 2008, and then again in 2018.
In a opinion piece published on Wednesday, Wired’s Kate O’Neill explained how the posts could help improve algorithms designed to take into account ageing.
Read O'Neill's full column here
Highly accurate facial recognition systems already exist, and the technology is already in everyday use, such as for unlocking your phone just by showing it your face, but they rarely take into account ageing.
The 10-year-challenge provides a huge amount of data easily identified with keywords such as “me in 2008” and “me in 2018” O’Neill said .
Back in the Blackberry 8520 Days #2008v2018 #2009to2019 pic.twitter.com/pWFeN0ziJD
— Lasizwe (@lasizwe) January 14, 2019
This in contrast to typical Facebook photos, which may not be posted chronologically, or profile pictures that often don't feature the user themselves.
10-year-challenge information, and systems developed using it, could help law enforcement agencies across the world identify criminals or missing people who’ve aged, O'Neill said.
Also read: Taylor Swift used facial recognition software to identify her stalkers at concerts
Facial recognition is already widely used to catch criminals around the world.
In 2017, Chinese authorities used facial recognition to identify 25 suspects who had been avoiding arrest, including a man who had been on the run for a quarter of a century.
The Guardian reported that Qingdao authorities said their system had a 98.1% accuracy rate.
A year later, a man was arrested in China’s Jiangxi province after being picked out of a crowd 60,000 after he had been on the run for “economic crimes”, the Washington Post reported.
In India, authorities used facial recognition to find 3,000 children within four days in April, 2018.
Facial recognition has also been used by United States immigration officials to identify illegal immigrants.
Receive a single WhatsApp every morning with all our latest news: click here.
Also from Business Insider South Africa:
- Order the wrong size pizza from Debonairs and you could pay up to 43% extra – here’s how to get the most pizza for the least money
- Video of Nairobi terror attack may have revealed a US Navy SEAL on secretive mission
- A Brexit delay is almost certain after Theresa May's historic defeat
- This beautiful South African photo is among the best wedding pics in the world
- These are the hottest financial shares right now, according to the South African who was the world’s top fund manager for four years in a row
- Discovery Vitality is starting to demand that you tag out of gyms as well as into them – to stop fake, no-exercise visits