How symmetry can come to the aid of machine learning

Behrooz Tahmasebi—an MIT Ph.D. student in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and an affiliate of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL)—was taking a mathematics course on differential equations in late 2021 when a glimmer of inspiration struck. In that class, he learned for the first time about Weyl’s law, …

A sleeker facial recognition technology tested on Michelangelo’s David

Many people are familiar with facial recognition systems that unlock smartphones and game systems or allow access to our bank accounts online. But the current technology can require boxy projectors and lenses. Now, researchers report on a sleeker 3D surface imaging system with flatter, simplified optics. In proof-of-concept demonstrations, the new system recognized the face …

A camera-based anti-facial recognition technique

Facial recognition systems, computational tools that can recognize individuals in images or video footage, are now widely employed worldwide. Some users and developers, however, have raised privacy-related concerns, as by definition facial recognition techniques rely on images that capture people’s faces. It is possible to use facial recognition techniques to identify the person by his/her …