
The super-recognisers of Scotland Yard - pepys
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2016/08/super-recognisers-scotland-yard
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atemerev
I have prosopagnosia. It's not that I can't recognize people at all; however,
I have to rely mostly on haircut styles, mimics and movement patterns, and,
above all, voice. I almost never identify actors in the movies (as they change
their appearances professionally and I have trouble in remembering actual
facial features), and it is out of question for me to remember anyone's face
after several months. Especially when the haircut changes.

I thought it is relatively common condition (around 2% of people). But other
people seem to be genuinely surprised by it every time: "how could you not
recognize me? I have passed directly in front of you?" Sorry.

~~~
Mz
Studies show that people have trouble recognizing someone out of context about
half the time. In other words, you work with John, you run into him elsewhere.
You may not recognize him at all or you may realize you know him, but struggle
to say from where.

People who are giving you a hard time about this likely are overestimating
their ability to recognize faces. Context significantly influences this.

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orf
> “Caballero was gobsmacked,” Rabbett told me. “He then got a bit arsey,
> saying, ‘I’m not speaking to you until I’ve had a cigarette, I’m getting out
> of here, you can’t do this to me.’ And then it was: ‘Yeah, it’s gonna be a
> full hands-up. Let’s get it done.’”

I love English slang. Great article as well, I was surprised that the Scotland
Yard group was the only one in the world.

> DCI Mick Neville reckons that it will be ten to 20 years before software is
> advanced enough to be a useful tool, and even then super-recognisers will
> still be needed to analyse the results and identify the suspects.

Perhaps augmentation is a better approach than replacement. By that I mean it
might be really useful for them to be able to search a database of mugshots or
photos for 'people with bigish ears, smallish nose and a spot on the left
cheek'.

~~~
vintermann
I'm betting that the system they have is an old pre-NN thing. Certainly not
state of the art. The big gains in image recognition has happened fairly
recently. Here's a survey of results on the Labeled Faces in the Wild dataset:

[https://people.cs.umass.edu/~elm/papers/LFW_survey.pdf](https://people.cs.umass.edu/~elm/papers/LFW_survey.pdf)

~~~
desas
They use L1 Identity Solutions ABIS Face Examiner

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niccl
> Porritt’s unit has its own software but this has been responsible for only
> one of the 2,010 identifications made since May 2015. DCI Mick Neville
> reckons that it will be ten to 20 years before software is advanced enough
> to be a useful tool, and even then super-recognisers will still be needed to
> analyse the results and identify the suspects

And yet so much surveillance is based on using facial recognition software to
identify 'people of interest. Here's an empirical study showing it doesn't
really work.

~~~
vintermann
That's no empirical study. It's anecdote from one police department, and who
knows what software they use.

In the best case, maybe some 5-6 year old academic project that got
commercialized. In the worst case, maybe something their nephew who's really
good with computers wrote ("its own software" suggests some bespoke thing,
which makes the latter more likely).

~~~
desas
I know. It's L1 Identity Solutions ABIS Face Examiner

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mathattack
I'm amazed that someone (who committed 40+ thefts that) they worked so hard to
catch got less than 4 years in jail. Perhaps they're wasting their time on
petty criminals.

I suspect that computers will help out quite a bit. Similar to other topics,
computers will first outperform most people, then ultimately everyone, but
computers plus people will outperform just computers.

~~~
onion2k
4 years in prison is approximately 5% of a typical lifespan. That seems like a
lot to me.

~~~
Ntrails
He will likely serve 2 years at most, and after those two years one could
reasonably predict he'll re-offend. In which case I'm reminded of porridge:

" _You are an habitual criminal, who accepts arrest as an occupational hazard,
and presumably accepts imprisonment in the same casual manner._ "

Now, apparently the guy never thought he'd go down for all of his crimes, but
he knew arrest was a real risk. Same with prison. I'm afraid I don't have a
strong opinion on what the best choices are that a criminal justice system can
make. Clearly you aren't going to scare people straight with hardnosed
punishments though, because their evaluation of risks are not what you think
they should be.

~~~
mattmanser
Not sure if you're talking about the individual or reoffending in general, but
according to HM prison service the reoffending chance would be 36℅:

[http://open.justice.gov.uk/reoffending/prisons/](http://open.justice.gov.uk/reoffending/prisons/)

~~~
Ntrails
I was basing it entirely on the guy as described by the article (as in, I was
making wild assumptions).

Super cool site. That data would be pretty fun to play with though,
age/offense count/previous offences/family etc would all be cool buckets to
play with. Plus all the things I don't think of off the top of my head

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deegles
Could super-recognizers be used for parallel construction? Seems like it would
be a great fit.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction)

~~~
leaveyou
I suspect the "super-recognizers" are a good cover for some new algorithm for
face identification..

"trawling through an image database with more than 100,000 stills.." sounds
quite incredible to me.

~~~
thom
I have seen organisations manually perform larger, more tedious tasks, for
more money, with less useful results, so I'm happy to take it at face value.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Pun intended? If so, nicely done...

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rdtsc
For some reason I thought of Tron.

[http://tron.wikia.com/wiki/Recognizer](http://tron.wikia.com/wiki/Recognizer)

In that universe, recognizers are "capable of capturing fugitive programs and
vehicles"

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davidw
It'd be fun to try that test - I find myself noting the similarities between
people "X looks like Y", and people nod along.

Maybe I'm not material for their special unit, though: one that completely
escaped me is that George from Blackadder is one and the same as Dr. House:
Hugh Laurie.

~~~
nkurz
Here are some tests for talent (or lack of talent) in this area:

[https://greenwichuniversity.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_e3x...](https://greenwichuniversity.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_e3xDuCccGAdgbfT)

[http://www.abc.net.au/cm/lb/6744428/data/david-
white27s-face...](http://www.abc.net.au/cm/lb/6744428/data/david-
white27s-face-recognition-test-data.pptx)

[http://www.testmybrain.org/SupersRecruitment.html](http://www.testmybrain.org/SupersRecruitment.html)

[http://www.faceblind.org/facetests/ff/ff_intro.php](http://www.faceblind.org/facetests/ff/ff_intro.php)

[http://www.bbk.ac.uk/psychology/psychologyexperiments/experi...](http://www.bbk.ac.uk/psychology/psychologyexperiments/experiments/facememorytest/startup.php)

I'm not totally face blind, but I'm definitely impaired. I recognize people I
see regularly just fine if they are in a familiar context. In other
situations, rely more heavily on voice, gait, and haircut. The idea of
choosing movies based on "favorite actor" makes no sense to me.

On tests such as these, I'm happy when I get the "do you understand the
instructions" training questions right. Sometimes I can pick a face that I've
just seen out of a short lineup based on verbal description of a single
feature ("bushy eyebrows" or "full lips"), but usually I'm just purely
guessing, hoping that my subconscious has the fabled "blind sight" that I
can't consciously access.

~~~
finnh
I just did the greenwich one. That was fun - thanks. One complicating factor
is that they re-use faces in the lineups, so you end up recognizing people
from two faces ago. (intentional, no doubt).

~~~
dvtv75
I did that one, as well. 9/14, which is a lot better than I expected - I did
"cheat" though. I picked details on their faces, and concentrated on
remembering them.

I have aphantasia (to a degree). For example, I had difficulty recognizing my
mother when she dyed her hair a few years ago.

~~~
owenjonesuk
Thanks for introducing me to aphantasia, which I hadn't heard of. For others
that haven't, it means not being able to imagine images or sounds in your
mind. It was only discovered recently, and I think it was popularised by this
blog post by Blake Ross, which is well worth a read.

[https://www.facebook.com/notes/blake-ross/aphantasia-how-
it-...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/blake-ross/aphantasia-how-it-feels-to-
be-blind-in-your-mind/10156834777480504/w)

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Artlav
As someone who can barely remember faces, i find this quite amazing.

Another thought is - how long before AI recognition would eliminate this job.
20 years they give sounds like an enormous over-estimate.

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titanomachy
What is up with this site? The tab rapidly climbs to 1.8 GB of memory and 100%
CPU utilization, on the latest version of macOS and Chrome.

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imaginenore
I'm surprised face recognition software isn't used in the high-end stores.

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ommunist
maybe humans do better in facial recognition than NEC software. But I found no
statistical evidence for that.

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tanderson92
Just a note on the title: it appears to be an homage to Warren Buffet's
classic speech "The superinvestors of Graham-and-Doddsville"

