Neural networks allow us to 'read faces' in a new way

Give us your feedback Thank you for your feedback. Last September, Stanford professor Michal Kosinski unleashed a torrent of controversy when he used artificial intelligence to attempt to predict peoples' sexual orientation from their faces. Now he has set himself the challenge of deciphering his subjects' political beliefs with similar software. The research is an illustration of what can be done with deep neural networks -- the type of machine learning behind much artificial intelligence, which spots patterns and makes predictions from large volumes of data such as text and images. Other image recognition technologies driven by neural networks are being developed for uses including reading signs for autonomous driving and automatically detecting weapons in airport security scanners.