Computer Science | Grinnell College

On February 28, 2017, we’ll be looking at applications of machine learning to judge people by their faces. Faces have the potential to convey much information about a person’s emotion and intent, but extracting that information from a face alone is a difficult task (and arguably impossible or impractical depending on which side of the research you fall on). Computers equipped with machine learning and computer vision algorithms have the capacity to perform these sorts of analyses on faces. What is possible with this sort of technology? Are there any ethical ramifications to consider?

• Malcom Gladwell. Blink (Excerpt: The Mysteries of Mind Reading).
• Emerging Technology from the arXiv. Machine-Vision Algorithm Learns to Judge People by Their Faces. November 1, 2016.
• Emerging Technology from the arXiv. Neural Network Learns to Identify Criminals by Their Faces. November 22, 2016.

Paper copies of the readings are available outside Prof. Curtsinger's office. Computer science table (CS Table) is a weekly meeting of Grinnell College community members (students, faculty, staff, etc.) interested in discussing topics related to computing and computer science. CS Table meets Tuesdays from 12:00-1:00pm in JRC 224B. Contact the CS faculty for the weekly reading. Students on meal plans, faculty, and staff are expected to cover the cost of their meals. Visitors to the College and students not on meal plans can charge their meals to the department.

On Thursday, December 3, Charles Frantz 2011 and Jeff Leep 2011 will present the results of their summer research on automatic classification of objects, conducted here under the direction of Professor Jerod Weinman.

Refreshments will be served at 4:15 p.m. in the Computer Science Commons (Noyce 3817). The talk, Combining hierarchy and feature sharing for object categorization, will follow at 4:30 p.m. in Noyce 3821.