A memory expert has defeated an artificial intelligence machine in a contest held in China.Organised by eCommerce firm Ant Financial, the Internet finance affiliate of Alibaba Group and the firm behind AliPay, the contest pitted Wang Yuheng against a robot called Mark.Wang and Roger, dubbed the “Chinese AlphaGo”, took turns to identify 50 popular online celebrities, both in person and by using photos.Mark took the first round as it took six minutes less than Wang to recognize the photos of three of the girls from a total of 150.In the second round, the number of photos was increased to 300. Both succeeded, but Wang spent one minute less than Mark at the task.The third round required them to figure out which were the childhood photos of one or two of the girls. Wang spent only 21 minutes and 48 seconds, successfully identifying one and mistaking another, while Mark made mistakes on both despite spending a longer time — 28 minutes and 2 seconds.Pi Dong, a senior expert with Ant Financial, noted that Wang viewed three-dimensional human faces while Mark made decisions based on two-dimensional pictures taken by photographers.He said that the most important thing was that the contest would help people gain a better understanding of face recognition technology.
Human beats AI bot in Alibaba face recognition contest
