Microsoft app guesses your age from your photo

[MichaelChang]

<p>For a bit of fun but horribly inaccurate: <br>

<a href="http://how-old.net/">http://how-old.net/</a><br>

<a href="http://recode.net/2015/05/03/shingy-the-senior-citizen-and-other-things-we-learned-from-microsofts-how-old-net/">http://recode.net/2015/05/03/shingy-the-senior-citizen-and-other-things-we-learned-from-microsofts-how-old-net/</a></p>

[Karim Ghantous]

<p>Interesting, and worth the challenge. But as you say, it can be horribly inaccurate. AI sounds easy: just get a bunch of very smart programmers to solve a problem. But AI is such a hard problem in general that there are no humans smart enough to make strong progress. Either that, or the right tools haven't been developed yet.</p>

<p>I mean, I still haven't seen a film scanner that simultaneously meets 80% of these ideal criteria: affordability, speed, quality. If we can't achieve that, do you really think that we can achieve accurate AI?</p>

[MichaelChang]

<p>Microsoft says the app was put together in a day by a couple of developers:<br>

<a href="http://blog.how-old.net/">Fun with ML, Stream Analytics and PowerBI - Observing Virality in Real Time</a></p>

<p>And the Microsoft <a href="http://gallery.azureml.net/">Microsoft Azure Machine Learning</a> API is available for download if anyone cares to play around with developing their own apps. </p>

[lex_jenkins]

<p>Tried it a few days ago when it popped up via Facebook. My first reaction was, meh, not so good. It guessed my current age accurately, but was wildly inaccurate on photos of family members as kids - it identified 8-12 year olds who looked very obviously that age as being in their 20s.</p>

<p>Then I read the Quora thread and realized it's very much a slapped together beta and was much more impressed with the potential. Bing's image search has already surpassed Google's in some respects - notably in finding relevant images. However Google still has the best image recognition for finding unidentified and/or partial images.</p>

<p>I can see terrific potential for facial recognition software in image editing and organizing. Especially in terms of content aware taxonomy. Imagine not having to manually go back and tag tens of thousands of still photos, or hours of video. Imagine good content aware taxonomy automagically reviewing your videos, and creating keywords and plain language identifiers based on what it sees.</p>

<p>"Hey, Mnemonster, where's that photo and video of my kid brother fishing while wearing a bandana at Hippie Lake? He would have been around 13 years old."</p>

<p>Pretty cool possibilities.</p>

[MichaelChang]

<p><a href="https://www.quora.com/How-does-how-old-net-work/answer/Eason-Wang-6">Eason Wang's answer to How does how-old.net work? - Quora</a></p>

[Edwin Barkdoll]

<p>Said I was 10 years younger than I am - I stopped there.<br>

My wife was too curious. First shot was nearly 20 years younger, the second 10 years older and the 3rd 15 years older. Should have quit while she was ahead.</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<blockquote>

<p>"Hey, Mnemonster, where's that photo and video of my kid brother fishing while wearing a bandana at Hippie Lake? He would have been around 13 years old."<br>

Pretty cool possibilities.</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>Far out, but it could happen.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>