Machine learning models are vulnerable to adversarial examples: small changes to images can cause computer vision models to make mistakes such as identifying a school bus as an ostrich. However, it is still an open question whether humans are prone to similar mistakes. Here, we address this question by leveraging recent techniques that transfer adversarial examples from computer vision models with known parameters and architecture to other models with unknown parameters and architecture, and by matching the initial processing of the human visual system. We find that adversarial examples that strongly transfer across computer vision models influence the classifications made by time-limited human observers.

Machine learning models are vulnerable to adversarial examples: small changes to images can cause computer vision models to make mistakes such as identifying a school bus as an ostrich. However, it is still an open question whether humans are prone to similar mistakes. Here, we address this question by leveraging recent techniques that transfer adversarial examples from computer vision models with known parameters and architecture to other models with unknown parameters and architecture, and by matching the initial processing of the human visual system. We find that adversarial examples that strongly transfer across computer vision models influence the classifications made by time-limited human observers.

Machine learning models are vulnerable to adversarial examples: small changes to images can cause computer vision models to make mistakes such as identifying a school bus as an ostrich. However, it is still an open question whether humans are prone to similar mistakes. Here, we address this question by leveraging recent techniques that transfer adversarial examples from computer vision models with known parameters and architecture to other models with unknown parameters and architecture, and by matching the initial processing of the human visual system. We find that adversarial examples that strongly transfer across computer vision models influence the classifications made by time-limited human observers. Papers published at the Neural Information Processing Systems Conference.

Ever since convolutional neural networks began outperforming humans in specific image recognition tasks, research in the field of computer vision has proceeded at breakneck pace. The basic architecture of CNNs (or ConvNets) was developed in the 1980s. Yann LeCun improved upon the original design in 1989 by using backpropagation to train models to recognize handwritten digits. We've come a long way since then. In 2018, we saw novel architecture designs that improve upon performance benchmarks and also expand the range of media that machine learning models can analyze. We also saw a number of breakthroughs with media generation which enable photorealistic style transfer, high-resolution image generation, and video-to-video synthesis.