Differences between deep neural networks and human perception

When your mother calls your name, you know it's her voice -- no matter the volume, even over a poor cell phone connection. And when you see her face, you know it's hers -- if she is far away, if the lighting is poor, or if you are on a bad FaceTime call. This robustness to variation is a hallmark of human perception. On the other hand, we are susceptible to illusions: We might fail to distinguish between sounds or images that are, in fact, different. Scientists have explained many of these illusions, but we lack a full understanding of the invariances in our auditory and visual systems.