Computer Eyesight Gets a Lot More Accurate

Open CV is a mistake, but the style guide in force at the Times gives guidance for the use of dots in abbreviations. G.P.U. appears as dictated by their style guide. The Times also inserts dots into C.I.A. and F.B.I. for the same reason.

Re: Computer Eyesight Gets a Lot More Accurate

#5

Post by lifeisstillgood » Tue, Aug 19, 2014, 8:05 AM UTC

Computer vision is one of those odd areas that I cannot see a nice gentle slope to adoption, but instead is a step change. For example NLP gives us all sorts of add ons to our current interaction with computers (hey let's do sentiment analysis of customer reviews / emails / etc)

But there is no obvious slope for computer vision - we need an infrastructure of cameras and bandwidth before it becomes ubiquitous

So I struggle to see the profitable intermediate businesses between here and there - and that troubles me.

Re: Computer Eyesight Gets a Lot More Accurate

#6

Post by nl » Tue, Aug 19, 2014, 8:45 AM UTC

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #5

Computer vision is one of those odd areas that I cannot see a nice gentle slope to adoption, but instead is a step change. For example NLP gives us all sorts of add ons to our current interaction with computers (hey let's do sentiment analysis of customer reviews / emails / etc) But there is no obvious slope for computer vision - we need an infrastructure of cameras and bandwidth before it becomes ubiquitous So I str…

I don't think that's entirely true.

There are many tasks where the current levels of accuracy are sufficient (eg, registration plate recognition), and as recognition slowly improves more and more tasks become possible.

Pete Warden has written extensively on this topic[1]. His "hipster detection" algorithm is quite inaccurate by any conventional measurement, but is accurate enough to be useful.

[1] http://petewarden.com/2014/07/31/how-to-get-computer-vision-...

Re: Computer Eyesight Gets a Lot More Accurate

#7

Post by Chronic29 » Tue, Aug 19, 2014, 9:32 AM UTC

liuliu wrote: post #2

This year's result: http://image-net.org/challenges/LSVRC/2014/results

The NYT article is riddled with errors. As pointed out below, the article uses G.P.U. when instead it should be GPU.

Re: Computer Eyesight Gets a Lot More Accurate

#8

Post by TeMPOraL » Tue, Aug 19, 2014, 9:32 AM UTC

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #5

Computer vision is one of those odd areas that I cannot see a nice gentle slope to adoption, but instead is a step change. For example NLP gives us all sorts of add ons to our current interaction with computers (hey let's do sentiment analysis of customer reviews / emails / etc) But there is no obvious slope for computer vision - we need an infrastructure of cameras and bandwidth before it becomes ubiquitous So I str…

There are many intermediate applications. From my own computer vision classes at university I remember examples of jobs when a guy is sitting and looking at a factory line or a machine for 8 hours a day in order to press a button if something goes wrong. This is a kind of work that bores humans out of their minds (thus making them extremely fallible), and that can be done much better with a few cameras and a computer running not-very-supercomplicated computer vision algorithms.

Re: Computer Eyesight Gets a Lot More Accurate

#9

Post by contingencies » Tue, Aug 19, 2014, 10:03 AM UTC

Science is but a perversion of itself unless it has as its ultimate goal the betterment of humanity. - Nikola Tesla

Does this not nearly amount to "population-scale mass surveillance algorithms"? Do people not feel this is accelerating negative social impacts of technology?

Is it merely a coincidence that winning teams include many from countries criticized for their totalitarian social contracts: Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, National University of Singapore, Microsoft Research China, Southeast University (China), Chinese Academy of Sciences? There's also a presence from Holland.

Oh, and guess who won the category "with additional training data"? Google.

Come on people, we can do better than this! SHAME SHAME SHAME.

Re: Computer Eyesight Gets a Lot More Accurate

#10

Post by sjtrny » Tue, Aug 19, 2014, 10:22 AM UTC

contingencies wrote: post #9

Science is but a perversion of itself unless it has as its ultimate goal the betterment of humanity. - Nikola Tesla Does this not nearly amount to "population-scale mass surveillance algorithms"? Do people not feel this is accelerating negative social impacts of technology? Is it merely a coincidence that winning teams include many from countries criticized for their totalitarian social contracts: Hong Kong Universit…

You misunderstand the type of algorithms being developed and tested for this challenge.