Humans are still better than artificial intelligence (AI) when it comes to guessing someone’s age, according to a new study conducted by Israeli researchers. The findings suggest that humans have an innate ability to accurately guess the age of people they don’t know, even if AI can come close.
The research team from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and Tel Aviv University used facial recognition technology in their experiment. They asked participants to look at photos of strangers and estimate their ages based on what they saw. The results showed that human guesses were more accurate than those made by AI algorithms developed for the same task.
Lead researcher Dr. Tal Hassner said this was because humans use “contextual cues” such as clothing or hairstyle when making judgments about someone’s age, while AI relies solely on physical features like wrinkles or skin tone. He added that these contextual cues are important for understanding how we interact with each other in social situations, which is something machines cannot do yet.
The study also found that men tend to be better at guessing women’s ages than vice versa – likely due to gender stereotypes about aging – but both genders performed similarly when estimating the ages of men in photographs. This suggests there may be some universal factors involved in our ability to judge others’ ages accurately without knowing them personally.
Dr Hassner believes this research could help us understand why humans are so good at recognizing faces despite differences between individuals: “We believe our findings provide insight into why humans excel at face recognition tasks compared with computers,” he said.” We think it has something to do with our ability to make inferences beyond just facial features.”
This isn’t the first time researchers have looked into how well humans can guess someone’s age from a photograph; previous studies have suggested similar results, although none had explored whether context plays a role in accuracy as much as this one did. It does appear though that we’re still better than machines when it comes down to judging people’s ages – and perhaps even more complex things too!
In today’s world where technology is rapidly advancing, it is reassuring news that human intuition remains superior over machine learning algorithms when attempting certain tasks such as determining another person’s age from a photo alone—at least for now! While further research needs done before any definitive conclusions can be drawn regarding exactly why we possess this unique skill set over machines, one thing is clear: Humans remain capable of outperforming AI systems in certain areas where context matters most—a fact which should not go overlooked given its potential implications across many industries ranging from healthcare and law enforcement all the way through marketing and advertising campaigns alike!
The Times of Israel