Gender discrimination and prediction on the basis of facial metric information

AbstractHorizontal and vertical facial measurements are statistically independent. Discriminant analysis shows that five of such normalized distances explain over 95% of the gender differences of “training” samples and predict the gender of 90% novel test faces exhibiting various facial expressions. The robustness of the method and its results are assessed. It is argued that these distances (termed fiducial) are compatible with those found experimentally by psychophysical and neurophysiological studies. In consequence, partial explanations for the effects observed in these experiments can be found in the intrinsic statistical nature of the facial stimuli used

The Relations Between Pedagogical and Scientific Explanations of Algorithms: Case Studies from the French Administration

The opacity of some recent Machine Learning (ML) techniques have raised fundamental questions on their explainability, and created a whole domain dedicated to Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI). However, most of the literature has been dedicated to explainability as a scientific problem dealt with typical methods of computer science, from statistics to UX. In this paper, we focus on explainability as a pedagogical problem emerging from the interaction between lay users and complex technological systems. We defend an empirical methodology based on field work, which should go beyond the in-vitro analysis of UX to examine in-vivo problems emerging in the field. Our methodology is also comparative, as it chooses to steer away from the almost exclusive focus on ML to compare its challenges with those faced by more vintage algorithms. Finally, it is also philosophical, as we defend the relevance of the philosophical literature to define the epistemic desiderata of a good explanation. This study was conducted in collaboration with Etalab, a Task Force of the French Prime Minister in charge of Open Data & Open Government Policies, dealing in particular with the enforcement of the right to an explanation. In order to illustrate and refine our methodology before going up to scale, we conduct a preliminary work of case studies on the main different types of algorithms used by the French administration: computation, matching algorithms and ML. We study the merits and drawbacks of a recent approach to explanation, which we baptize input-output black box reasoning or BBR for short. We begin by presenting a conceptual framework including the distinctions necessary to a study of pedagogical explainability. We proceed to algorithmic case studies, and draw model-specific and model-agnostic lessons and conjectures

Towards extracting artistic sketches and maps from digital elevation models

The main trend of computer graphics is the creation of photorealistic images however, there is increasing interest in the simulation of artistic and illustrative techniques. This thesis investigates a profile based technique for automatically extracting artistic sketches from regular grid digital elevation models. The results resemble those drawn by skilled cartographers and artists.The use of cartographic line simplification algorithms, which are usually applied to complex two-dimensional lines such as coastlines, allow a set of most important points on the terrain surface to be identified, these form the basis for sketching.This thesis also contains a wide ranging review of terrain representation techniques and suggests a new taxonomy

Adaptive Object Classification: a Mobile Robot Case Study. Internal Report 9607

An important task for any autonomous agent is to classify any objects that it encounters in its environment. A particular type of object may be useful to the agent, for example, or alternatively, the positions of recognizable objects may be used as local landmarks in a cognitive map of the environment. Biological organisms are adept at classifying new or familiar objects. It is apparent that biological organisms often have self organizing methods of classification and that they specialize in recognizing particular groups of objects. Biological organisms also often incorporate information from their own movements; rather than relying solely on sense information alone. In this paper, these three observations inspire an adaptive scheme in which a mobile robot learns to recognize examples from a group of complex objects. The autonomous agent moves around each object to determine the object shape. The important features of the shape are then extracted by a self-organizing neural layer. Each object is then represented by a small number of feature amplitudes making object classification more simple. The paper describes the scheme applied to a small skid-steer mobile robot equipped with infra-red proximity sensors

Méliès Boots

Before he became the father of cinematic special effects, George Méliès (1861-1938) was a maker of deluxe French footwear, an illusionist, and a caricaturist. Proceeding from these beginnings, Méliès Boots traces how the full trajectory of Georges Méliès’ career during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, along with the larger cultural and historical contexts in which Méliès operated, shaped his cinematic oeuvre. Solomon examines Méliès’ unpublished drawings and published caricatures, the role of laughter in his magic theater productions, and the constituent elements of what Méliès called "the new profession of the cinéaste." The book also reveals Méliès' connections to the Incohérents, a group of ephemeral artists from the 1880s, demonstrating the group’s relevance for Méliès, early cinema, and modernity. By positioning Méliès in relation to the material culture of his time, Solomon demonstrates that Méliès’ work was expressive of a distinctly modern, and modernist, sensibility that appeared in France during the 1880s in the wake of the Second Industrial Revolution

Méliès Boots

Before he became the father of cinematic special effects, George Méliès (1861-1938) was a maker of deluxe French footwear, an illusionist, and a caricaturist. Proceeding from these beginnings, Méliès Boots traces how the full trajectory of Georges Méliès’ career during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, along with the larger cultural and historical contexts in which Méliès operated, shaped his cinematic oeuvre. Solomon examines Méliès’ unpublished drawings and published caricatures, the role of laughter in his magic theater productions, and the constituent elements of what Méliès called "the new profession of the cinéaste." The book also reveals Méliès' connections to the Incohérents, a group of ephemeral artists from the 1880s, demonstrating the group’s relevance for Méliès, early cinema, and modernity. By positioning Méliès in relation to the material culture of his time, Solomon demonstrates that Méliès’ work was expressive of a distinctly modern, and modernist, sensibility that appeared in France during the 1880s in the wake of the Second Industrial Revolution

Introduction: Ways of Machine Seeing

How do machines, and, in particular, computational technologies, change the way we see the world? This special issue brings together researchers from a wide range of disciplines to explore the entanglement of machines and their ways of seeing from new critical perspectives. This 'editorial' is for a special issue of AI & Society, which includes contributions from: María Jesús Schultz Abarca, Peter Bell, Tobias Blanke, Benjamin Bratton, Claudio Celis Bueno, Kate Crawford, Iain Emsley, Abelardo Gil-Fournier, Daniel Chávez Heras, Vladan Joler, Nicolas Malevé, Lev Manovich, Nicholas Mirzoeff, Perle Møhl, Bruno Moreschi, Fabian Offert, Trevor Paglan, Jussi Parikka, Luciana Parisi, Matteo Pasquinelli, Gabriel Pereira, Carloalberto Treccani, Rebecca Uliasz, and Manuel van der Veen

Time to Leave Uchronia: Queer Eco-Temporalities for a Livable World

My dissertation is a Feminist contribution to Environmental Political Theory focused on temporality. My research investigates the tension between the urgent need to act fast in a fast-changing world, and the necessity for time to pause and think through such radical and rapid changes. As it signals our nearing the planet’s limits, the emergence of the “anthropocene” crisis challenges growth-driven “progress.” I begin this dissertation with a survey of Environmental Thought that helps situate my contribution to the ongoing debates in this field, underscoring that as ecosophers pose the question of the nonhuman, in so doing they also are confronted with problems related to temporality. Then, building on the concept of “utopia,” I critique a temporality that assumes infinite growth on a planet with finite resources, while constantly postponing its promises of abundance to an impossible future. The concept I propose is “uchronia”: growth-driven progress is a timeless (ou-chronos), dangerously idealized (eu-chronos) temporality, just like “utopia” refers to both a “nowhere” place and an “ideal” place (ou- and eu-topos). I draw from Nietzsche’s concept of eternal return to problematize teleologies of progress: the eternal return prompts us to live our lives as though we were prepared to re-live them eternally. In contrast with uchronia, alternative, queer eco-temporalities – I call these “anti-uchronia,” “heterochronia,” and “synchrony” – build upon and radicalize sustainability. However, not all “eco-temporalities” – alternatives to the hegemonic, in-crisis temporalities – constitute themselves as non-linear or radical – i.e not all of them are queer: I have also coined the concept of “counter-uchronia” to describe certain understandings of “sustainable growth,” justifications of geoengineering and carbon markets creation, as well as primitivist (often virilist) environmentalist discourses which respectively advocate the “return” to a golden past of harmony with (often feminized) “Nature,” or technofixes and green capitalism to amend and resume growth-driven progress’ uchronian course. To advance this conceptual framework, I offer close readings of environmental science fiction stories, activist manifestos, graffiti art, performing arts including contemporary dance and circus, as well as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scientific reports

Allegro non troppo

"A film that will let you see the music and listen to drawings; in a word, a film full of Fantasia!" Bruno Bozzetto's Allegro non Troppo tips its hand right away: it is an unabashed, yet full of admiration, retake on Walt Disney's 1940 "concert feature". The obvious nod to that model fuels many tongue-in-cheek jokes in the film; however, Allegro non Troppo soon departs from mere parody, and becomes a showcase for the multifaceted aesthetics of Italian animation in 1976, as well as a witty social satire and a powerful rethinking of the music-image relationship in cinema. Marco Bellano's open access book reconstructs the history of the production of Allegro non Troppo, on the basis of an original research developed with the contribution of Bozzetto himself; it also presents an audiovisual analysis of the work, as to reassess the international relevance of Bozzetto's achievements by giving insight into the director's creative process. The eBook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com