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Nowhere To Hide: What Machines Can Tell From Your Face

The human face is a remarkable piece of work.1．. So is the face’s ability to send emotional signals, whether through the unconscious shame or the trick of a false smile. People spend much of their waking lives, in the office and the courtroom as well as the bar and the bedroom, reading faces, for signs of attraction, hostility, trust and deceit. They also spend plenty of time trying to hide their feelings, intentions or nature.

2． .In America facial recognition is used by churches to track worshippers’ attendance; in Britain, by retailers to spot past shoplifters. This year Welsh police used it to arrest a suspect outside a football game. In China it confirms the identities of ride-hailing drivers, permits tourists to enter attractions and lets people pay for things with a smile. Apple’s new iPhone is expected to use it to unlock the homescreen

Set against human skills, such applications might seem enhancive. Some breakthroughs, such as flight or the internet, obviously transform human abilities.3．.Although faces are peculiar to individuals, they are also public, so technology does not, at first sight, intrude on something that is private. And yet the ability to record, store and analyse images of faces cheaply, quickly and on a vast scale promises one day to bring about fundamental changes to notions of privacy, fairness and trust.

4．.Masking true feelings helps fix the wheels of daily life. If your partner can spot every prohibited yawn, and your boss every hint of annoyance, marriages and working relationships will be more truthful, but less harmonious. The basis of social interactions might change, too, from a set of commitments founded on trust to calculations of risk and reward derived from the information a computer attaches to someone’s face. Relationships might become more reasonable, but also transactional.