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MONDAY 7 JULY 2014 • [email protected] • www.thepeninsulaqatar.com • 4455 7741 inside Mercedes touts COMMUNITY self-driving • QTV and Mediadante win acclaimed CINE trucks Golden Eagle award P | 11 P | 4 MARKETPLACE • Digital deal promotion at Safari begins today P | 5 ENVIRONMENT • Dark snow speeding glacier melt P | 6 ENTERTAINMENT • In Emmy’s gamesmanship, drama is the new comedy COMPUTER AGE P | 8-9 Facial recognition technology, long used to search for criminals and to guess how a missing child might look as an adult, may soon become personal. A group of TECHNOLOGY scientists is working on a system that would analyse an individual’s prospects based on how his or her face has • How today’s technology aged. is catching up to Star Trek P | 12 LEARN ARABIC • Learn commonly used Arabic words and their meanings P | 13 2 PLUS | MONDAY 7 JULY 2014 COVER STORY New technology to analyse your face BY TARA BAHRAMPOUR MAGINE that an insurance underwriter comes to your house and, along with not- ing your weight and blood pressure, snaps a photo of your face. And that those wrin- kles, mottled spots and saggy parts, when fed into a computer, could estimate how long you Iwill live. Facial recognition technology, long used to search for criminals and to guess how a missing child might look as an adult, may soon become personal. A group of scientists is working on a system that would analyse an individual’s prospects based on how his or her face has aged. “We know in the field of aging that some people tend to senesce, or grow older, more rapidly than others, and some more slowly,” said Jay Olshansky, a biodemographer at the University of Illinois at Chicago who came up with the idea. “And we also know that the children of people who senesce more slowly tend to live longer than other people.” The research is still in its early stages, but the idea of using facial recognition technology has prompted interest from insurance company executives who see potential for using it in determining premiums, Olshansky said. There’s also a potential benefit for individuals: The technology might prod them to Washington Post staff writers Tara Bahrampour (age 47, just as the computer estimated) and Robert Samuels, change their health habits before it’s too late. 29, submitted their photos to a computer to test its ability to correctly guess their ages. In Samuels’ case, the The technology involves using a computer to scan computer went with 33 until he shaved off a goatee, then placed him at 27. a photograph of a face for signs of aging. Factoring in the subject’s race, gender, education level and smoking history — all known to affect longevity prospects — it the quality of life in the final decades might also be “Aging is not such a deep part of our biology would analyse each section of cheek, eye, brow, mouth drastically improved, reducing the burdens imposed that it can’t be changed,” said Steven Austad, and jowl looking for shading variations that signal lines, by an aging population. chair of the biology department at the University dark spots, drooping and other age-related changes Increasing life expectancy by 2.2 years by slowing of Alabama at Birmingham. “All this stuff seemed that might indicate how the person is doing compared aging would save $7.1 trillion in disability and enti- like science fiction a few years ago, but now we have with others of the same age and background. tlement programmes over 50 years, according to a it, at least in mice.” As the United States skews increasingly older, paper in Health Affairs co-authored by Olshansky, The idea for the facial recognition project came to research into extending life span and, in particular, who is also a research associate at the University of Olshansky a couple of years ago during dinner with increasing the number of healthy years is a boom Chicago’s Centre on Ageing. an insurance underwriter. “He was complaining that topic for public and private entities. Longevity scientists say the key to extending he had a very short time to assess people’s survival Google last fall announced Calico, a new enter- healthy life lies in focusing on aging itself rather prospects” and that the methods used to do it were prise focusing on aging and associated diseases, for than on aging-related diseases. Even minor progress too blunt, Olshansky said. which it has been recruiting top scientists; it has in slowing the aging process would be more ground- Olshansky, whose work includes exploring the lim- not revealed details of its plans or how much it is breaking than major progress that tackles just one its to human longevity, slowing aging and studying investing. Another organisation, Human Longevity illness, they say. health and public-policy implications of individual Inc, headed by the well-known genomics researcher In fact, drugs already in use for some age-related and population ageing, knew that people who live Craig Venter, launched this spring with plans to build diseases may turn out to work because they are delay- longer generally look younger than other people of a database of human DNA sequencing to tackle dis- ing aging overall. “We may be at the beginning of a their age. He wondered whether that knowledge eases of aging; it raised $70m in an initial round of time when drugs approved for diabetes or macular could translate into something more scientific. funding. degeneration are actually working because they are He contacted Karl Ricanek, a professor of com- And the National Institutes of Health recently delaying the onset of aging,” said Dan Perry, founder puter science at the University of North Carolina launched an unprecedented collaborative initiative of the Alliance for Aging Research, a Washington- at Wilmington, who has worked on facial recogni- across 20 of its 27 specialised institutes to address based advocacy group. tion technology for the National Security Agency, aging and longevity. National Institute on Aging And while it is not yet clear whether humans will the CIA, and the FBI; along with a biostatistician director Richard Hodes said the NIH would also one day live 150 years, as some have predicted, sci- and other computer scientists, they developed a pro- like to work on the topic with some of the emerging entists are optimistic that the number of years of gramme to analyse photographs of faces. organisations. The economic and social implications healthy life — or “health span” — of humans can be They have launched a website inviting anyone in could be staggering. Not only will living to 100 become significantly increased and the infirmities associated the world to submit a photo. The database they are more common one day, longevity experts say, but with ageing reduced. developing, called Face My Age, is expected to deliver increasingly more accurate assessments and predic- tions as more people participate. The researchers are Facial recognition technology involves using a computer to scan a hoping for large numbers of people — at least 10,000 or 20,000, but preferably more — to submit photos photograph of a face for signs of ageing. Factoring in the subject’s and basic biographical information in exchange for feedback on how quickly they are ageing and what race, gender, education level and smoking history — all known this means for their longevity prospects. The person to affect longevity prospects — it would analyse each section of in the photo cannot smile or have makeup on, and must reveal if he or she has had plastic surgery. cheek, eye, brow, mouth and jowl looking for shading variations that The technique is more personalised than the cur- signal lines, dark spots, drooping and other age-related changes rent approach to face ageing. “The technology that is out there utilises group that might indicate how the person is doing compared with others norms, so they can artificially age you,” Ricanek said. “But ... the lines they paint on your face are actu- of the same age and background. ally the same as the lines they paint on my face, [whereas] the ones we’re using are individual.” PLUS | MONDAY 7 JULY 2014 3 Initially the site will give users only one number — institutions and other scientists. The concept is others who look crinkled are still running at age 80,” their apparent age — but as it becomes more refined, intriguing — if it works, said Nir Barzilai, director he said. Olshansky conceded that even if face aging it should be able to assign perceived ages to different of the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert is found to correlate with longevity, there will be parts of the face, Olshansky said. “Imagine taking Einstein College of Medicine in New York. But he outliers who don’t fit the general pattern. your iPhone and snapping a selfie and putting it into said it is not clear whether skin appearance alone “The longest-lived person in the world smoked our website and discovering that your eyes are that can reveal deeper signs of aging. Barzilai, who works for 100 years,” he said, adding that US presidents, of a 50-year-old, your lips are that of a 70-year-old, with centenarians, said he plans to submit photos of too, tend to be outliers, aging visibly faster in office your cheeks are that of a 50-year-old,” he said. some of his subjects, ages 60 to 116, to the database. but generally living longer than average. However, The algorithms work differently for people of dif- James Kirkland, director of the Kogod Center on he said, for the most part a face is a window onto a ferent genders and ethnic groups, Ricanek said.

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