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Listening for illegal logging chainsaws using TensorFlow

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Re: Listening for illegal logging chainsaws using TensorFlow

#5

Or they could legitimately be trying to make the world a better place along with making money. I know, naive right?

Yeah it's pretty naive. Google trying to make the world a better place would actually be illegal and would place the managers in jail for defrauding investors. Google's mission is to make as much money as possible, typical tactics include creating a good corporate image.

Re: Listening for illegal logging chainsaws using TensorFlow

#6
I'm not too familiar with ML, do you have to "train" tensorflow as to what audio in the data is "definitely a chainsaw" and which is "definitely a logging truck", etc etc? As in, you should keep doing this every now and then as you get more and more data, at least in the sense of flagging false positives (so as to unlearn that particular sound).

Re: Listening for illegal logging chainsaws using TensorFlow

#7

Anyone else wonder if google's on a massive PR drive given all the privacy-related bad press that tech has been getting recently?

They're certainly in a prime position to try to say that they're not eeeevil like Facebook.

They can sort of imply: hey, what did Google search, Gmail, maps, Android ever do to you? Microsoft and Apple are in a similar boat. It'd be sort of comical, if Google ends up benefiting from failing so spectacularly at social media.

Amazon has a problem of terrorizing other competitors at the moment, that's primarily who is upset with them (spurring endless media stories about Amazon's growing power). Consumers mostly love them.

Re: Listening for illegal logging chainsaws using TensorFlow

#8

I'm not too familiar with ML, do you have to "train" tensorflow as to what audio in the data is "definitely a chainsaw" and which is "definitely a logging truck", etc etc? As in, you should keep doing this every now and then as you get more and more data, at least in the sense of flagging false positives (so as to unlearn that particular sound).

Yes. In the video there is a short snippet where the audio is shown as a Fourier transformed image on the screen and a user is annotating the image of the sound using red boxes. This is a part of the process to train the ML model to recognize chainsaw sounds vs. other sounds.

Re: Listening for illegal logging chainsaws using TensorFlow

#9
post #5

Or they could legitimately be trying to make the world a better place along with making money. I know, naive right?

Yeah it's pretty naive. Google trying to make the world a better place would actually be illegal and would place the managers in jail for defrauding investors. Google's mission is to make as much money as possible, typical tactics include creating a good corporate image.

That a company's mission is to make money for their shareholders does not mean they pursue that mission to the exclusion of all else. They can also pursue side goals, from making the company a nice place to work at, to giving back to the society which allowed them to exist and grow in the first place. Some of these goals may have little to no tangible results on the bottomline, which is ok as long as they don't compromise their main objective. You seem to like to view the world through a cynical lens which is no more true to reality than a naive lens.

Re: Listening for illegal logging chainsaws using TensorFlow

#10
This technology is really cool. My question would be, "What happens when your AI detects chainsaws or logging trucks?". Do you contact some policy authority, some international authority? Also, why are their cell phone towers in the middle of the jungle? What about areas deep in the wilderness where no cell towers exist?
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