Human + AI Communication

We knew a face
mattered, but we
weren’t sure why

We needed a way for humans to communicate with the algorithm.

Solution 1: Gradients

On the left, you see an image of a cat. On the right, you see a gradient of the pixels that matter for defining an image of a cat.

On the left, you see a human mugshot. On the right, you see a gradient of what pixels matter for the algorithm's prediction.

A common way to solve this is to use gradients. Gradients tell us which pixels matter.

However, facial features are composite. They don’t just exist in one place. So, this approach did not help us communicate.

Solution 2: Morph Pixels

Humans are good at recognizing differences between two similar objects. We could try to morph the face along the gradient and see what changes.

Morphing along the gradient produced a morphed image. We need a morphed face in order to compare.

We built a GAN to generate synthetic mugshots. This way, the algorithm could learn what a "face" is in this context and keep its morphs consistent with its definition of a face.

Solution 3: Morph Faces

Now, we could morph into a new face and compare what changed at a low/high release probability.

We asked random subjects to identify the difference

Were the subjects right?

We had the subjects rate how well groomed a set of real mugshots were. Then we checked whether those ratings predicted judge choices.

Subjects identified several differences between the morphed faces. We labeled real mugshots with those different facial features and checked to see whether the features were predictive. They were, and dramatically so.

Full-faced
Tired eyes
Well-groomed
Age
Hair non-specific
Image quality
Mouth
Skin-clarity
Amount of facial hair

Fullest to thinnest face had a

30%

difference in overall detention rate

Full-faced is only part of the story. More research needs to be done to improve our method. In addition, this method can be applied in other domains to help us develop new hypotheses in partnership with algorithms.