AI algorithm successfully estimates the age and ethnic origin of people

Researchers from the Institute for Neural Computation at Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) in Bochum have engineered an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm that can successfully estimate the age and ethnic origin of people. The neuroinformatics engineers do not yet know which features the AI interprets despite it being quite accurate. Professor Laurenz Wiskott from the Institute for Neural Computation said, "We're not quite sure what features our algorithm is looking for." The system is a hierarchical neural network with eleven levels that has been fed several thousand photos of faces of different ages. "Traditionally, the images are the input data and the correct age is the target fed into the system, which then tries to optimise the intermediate steps to assess the required age," said lead author of the study Alberto Escalante.