Using Human-like Mechanism to Weaken Effect of Pre-training Weight Bias in Face-Recognition Convolutional Neural Network

Convolutional neural network (CNN), as an important model in artificial intelligence, has been widely used and studied in different disciplines. The computational mechanisms of CNNs are still not fully revealed due to the their complex nature. In this study, we focused on 4 extensively studied CNNs (AlexNet, VGG11, VGG13, and VGG16) which has been analyzed as human-like models by neuroscientists with ample evidence. We trained these CNNs to emotion valence classification task by transfer learning. Comparing their performance with human data, the data unveiled that these CNNs would partly perform as human does. We then update the object-based AlexNet using self-attention mechanism based on neuroscience and behavioral data. The updated FE-AlexNet outperformed all the other tested CNNs and closely resembles human perception. The results further unveil the computational mechanisms of these CNNs. Moreover, this study offers a new paradigm to better understand and improve CNN performance via human data.