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AI now better than humans at shape recognition


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#1 air90

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Posted 24 April 2007 - 04:16 AM


http://www.economist...tory_id=8954632

A computer at MIT can recognize shapes, objects, and animals 82% of the time. By contrast the humans tested got it right 80% of the time.
This is a pretty huge leap.

#2 Live Forever

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Posted 24 April 2007 - 12:33 PM

So much for captchas

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#3 maestro949

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Posted 24 April 2007 - 05:31 PM

They'll just get more challenging. e.g. Pick out the doberman or more attractive woman from a set of 4 pictures. At some point you'll have to trick the AI into proving it's too smart.

E.g. calculate how long it would take a dolphin to swim from New York to St Louis.

Human: **** you.
AI: 7.328332 days

#4 Live Forever

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Posted 24 April 2007 - 05:59 PM

They'll just get more challenging.  e.g. Pick out the doberman or more attractive woman from a set of 4 pictures.  At some point you'll have to trick the AI into proving it's too smart. 

E.g. calculate how long it would take a dolphin to swim from New York to St Louis.

Human:  **** you.
AI: 7.328332 days

True. I guess if AI gets smart enough to fool any captcha we throw at it, then it should be allowed to register for emails and things because it will be no different from a human in that respect, and deserves to have its own email.

#5 modelcadet

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Posted 24 April 2007 - 07:39 PM

would it be allowed to have separate junk and porn email addresses too?


I'm excited about AI, but I am actually growing legitimately fearful AI will take my job (music signal processors are getting better and better each year (no, it's not a bad thing, as that frees me to do other things to benefit the economy... but it is going to undermine the value of a skill in which I've heavily invested). At least I'm in a field that has some sort of permanence AI could never replace - I'm not an instrumentalist, I'm a musician. ;-D

I could rant about the future of computing right now, and how scary it is that it's actually right up on top of us, but I'll save that for another time.

#6 samson

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Posted 24 April 2007 - 08:09 PM

How do I invented Singularity?

Good to see actual progress with AI.

#7 maestro949

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Posted 24 April 2007 - 08:55 PM

would it be allowed to have separate junk and porn email addresses too?


I'm excited about AI, but I am actually growing legitimately fearful AI will take my job (music signal processors are getting better and better each year (no, it's not a bad thing, as that frees me to do other things to benefit the economy... but it is going to undermine the value of a skill in which I've heavily invested).  At least I'm in a field that has some sort of permanence AI could never replace - I'm not an instrumentalist, I'm a musician.  ;-D

I could rant about the future of computing right now, and how scary it is that it's actually right up on top of us, but I'll save that for another time.


I work in IT and nearly all projects I work on are to eliminate every manual process that requires human interaction. We often joke about 1-person insurance companies, telcos, banks, utilities, etc. but it really is trending in that direction. Automation is displacing blue collar work, rules engines and AI are displacing white collar work. Self service everything is cutting out whole layers of customer support and businesses that served as middle-men. Standards, APIs and template design patterns are even eroding quite a bit of the work I've done in the past. Surely this is helping free people up for other higher-level work but will we cross some threshold where all of the inefficiencies of human labor are driven out and there just isn't a return on investment when it comes to using human ingenuity over some off-the-shelf AI engine that can learn basic repetitive tasks? Also, what happens when automation becomes cheaper than unskilled manual labor? In general, I would suggest that if there is anything you see in your day to day job that can be done more efficiently by a computer or robot, retool your skillset.

#8 Live Forever

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Posted 24 April 2007 - 09:29 PM

would it be allowed to have separate junk and porn email addresses too?


I'm excited about AI, but I am actually growing legitimately fearful AI will take my job (music signal processors are getting better and better each year (no, it's not a bad thing, as that frees me to do other things to benefit the economy... but it is going to undermine the value of a skill in which I've heavily invested).  At least I'm in a field that has some sort of permanence AI could never replace - I'm not an instrumentalist, I'm a musician.  ;-D

I could rant about the future of computing right now, and how scary it is that it's actually right up on top of us, but I'll save that for another time.


I work in IT and nearly all projects I work on are to eliminate every manual process that requires human interaction. We often joke about 1-person insurance companies, telcos, banks, utilities, etc. but it really is trending in that direction. Automation is displacing blue collar work, rules engines and AI are displacing white collar work. Self service everything is cutting out whole layers of customer support and businesses that served as middle-men. Standards, APIs and template design patterns are even eroding quite a bit of the work I've done in the past. Surely this is helping free people up for other higher-level work but will we cross some threshold where all of the inefficiencies of human labor are driven out and there just isn't a return on investment when it comes to using human ingenuity over some off-the-shelf AI engine that can learn basic repetitive tasks? Also, what happens when automation becomes cheaper than unskilled manual labor? In general, I would suggest that if there is anything you see in your day to day job that can be done more efficiently by a computer or robot, retool your skillset.

I wonder what happens when all but a handful of jobs are done by AI. You would think you would need someone to consume the products and services you are providing with the AI.

I guess this has more to do with a fundamental breakdown of the economy viewed in the way we do today, and the retooling that will have to take place for society to continue functioning.

#9 air90

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Posted 24 April 2007 - 10:57 PM

Where this is going to have the largest impact is definitely in robotics. Combine this with one of the cars from the Darpa grand challenge then I think you have a winning driverless car.

#10 danielrichard

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Posted 25 April 2007 - 12:53 AM

would it be allowed to have separate junk and porn email addresses too?


I'm excited about AI, but I am actually growing legitimately fearful AI will take my job (music signal processors are getting better and better each year (no, it's not a bad thing, as that frees me to do other things to benefit the economy... but it is going to undermine the value of a skill in which I've heavily invested).  At least I'm in a field that has some sort of permanence AI could never replace - I'm not an instrumentalist, I'm a musician.  ;-D

I could rant about the future of computing right now, and how scary it is that it's actually right up on top of us, but I'll save that for another time.


I work in IT and nearly all projects I work on are to eliminate every manual process that requires human interaction. We often joke about 1-person insurance companies, telcos, banks, utilities, etc. but it really is trending in that direction. Automation is displacing blue collar work, rules engines and AI are displacing white collar work. Self service everything is cutting out whole layers of customer support and businesses that served as middle-men. Standards, APIs and template design patterns are even eroding quite a bit of the work I've done in the past. Surely this is helping free people up for other higher-level work but will we cross some threshold where all of the inefficiencies of human labor are driven out and there just isn't a return on investment when it comes to using human ingenuity over some off-the-shelf AI engine that can learn basic repetitive tasks? Also, what happens when automation becomes cheaper than unskilled manual labor? In general, I would suggest that if there is anything you see in your day to day job that can be done more efficiently by a computer or robot, retool your skillset.

This discussion reminded me of a "motivational" poster someone emailed me.

Posted Image

In case that link goes dead, you can actually find it by searching "motivation" on google images.

#11 Ghostrider

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Posted 25 April 2007 - 04:37 AM

I don't look at AI as displacing human jobs. I look at AI as providing reliefs from the tedious and boring jobs so that humans can focus on more interesting things. If any human is against AI out of fear that it will fill jobs that could be done by humans, they are simply against productivity.

#12 RighteousReason

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Posted 25 April 2007 - 04:42 AM

If you take singinst.org and crnano.org on their word, we can be fairly confident that both AGI and Molecular Manufacturing will be developed during the next decade.

Can you imagine? At some point during the twenty teens its just going to explode.

I think everybody needs to be aware of this possibility... I'm pretty convinced by their arguments/ideas myself. I personally think we are going to see a rather explosive Singularity occur at some point during the next decade.

You can't predict it exactly anyway... there are many different things being advanced at different rates, at some point though the technology is going to converge and somebody is going to build a seed technology that will trigger the Singularity. I think the Singularity Institute even has a shot at being the one to trigger the Singularity, and possibly in a Friendly way... although this is unlikely, there is probably much to gained by doing what I can to support their cause, all things considered.

#13 Mind

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Posted 25 April 2007 - 07:03 AM

The AI/robots taking over the economy has been discussed for decades, and it keeps getting closer. Even my job is under pressure.

I am not sure who the following ideas can be attributed to but I think it might be Marvin Minsky and Hans Moravec (maybe Rodney Brooks?). One of them said that having the entire economy taken over by bots would be like getting back our birth-rite. Back in the hunter-gatherer days, if you lived in a favorable climate with plenty of food and few predators, your life was basically liesure. If AIs do all the work then we can just relax.

Another one of those fellows compared the coming robot/AI revolution to an ocean that keeps rising. We humans are on a mountain and everytime the water rises we say "well, those jobs are repetitive and boring, we humans still do the important jobs". We keep saying that, but we cannot move any higher (bounded by evolution). We are at the top of the mountain, and the water keeps rising faster (AI keeps taking over more important jobs). The water will keep rising until it goes over our heads. Then what? Build a boat and live a life of liesure just floating around aimlessly in a vast ocean of AI? Or join forces with the ocean?

#14 eldar

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Posted 25 April 2007 - 10:04 AM

Another one of those fellows compared the coming robot/AI revolution to an ocean that keeps rising. We humans are on a mountain and everytime the water rises we say "well, those jobs are repetitive and boring, we humans still do the important jobs". We keep saying that, but we cannot move any higher (bounded by evolution). We are at the top of the mountain, and the water keeps rising faster (AI keeps taking over more important jobs). The water will keep rising until it goes over our heads. Then what? Build a boat and live a life of liesure just floating around aimlessly in a vast ocean of AI? Or join forces with the ocean?


I really like this view, it pretty much depicts the way I see it turning out also. Unless ofcourse the hard take off happens, in which case the "ocean" would rise over our heads much faster.

The problem that I see in the AI taking over even repetitive tasks is that not all people have the mental capacity to perform the more important jobs. That is just a hard fact and it produces a problem of what will these people do with their lives if and when robots start taking over their jobs.

That said, I fully advocate developing AI and am proceeding in that direction in my studies also. The above is just something that, atleast in my mind, might produce a serious issue once the technology gets here.

#15 modelcadet

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Posted 25 April 2007 - 11:15 AM

Sorry I sorta hijacked this thread with my realization that I'm NEVER going to pay back my student loans. Let me add some thoughts, then discuss several implications of this current technology.

Let me describe my current situation: I am just finishing school, working part time with a friend recording, editing, and mixing a cappella groups (a very interesting movement to be happening on college campuses as we approach the Singularity, don't you think). Anyway, we've been able to capture this small market because of the liberalizing influence of digital recording methods. No longer do you need a multi-million dollar studio to put out tracks: We built our studio ourselves for around a $20,000 investment. The price to create such a studio continues to go down. In addition, new programs such as increasingly better auto-tuners (and now signal processors) decrease the required investment in both equipment and human capital required to create an album.

While a lot of what we do is audio engineering, we are also artists. As audio engineering becomes cheaper, many artists will opt to do their own editing, mixing, etc. This liberalizes our specific art/trade, which while at the same time contributing to the marketplace of ideas, discourages collaboration.

In the long term, of course, this consideration (and it's equivalent across all fields) will not matter, as we'll all be unemployed and freed to fulfill this missing, 'human' demand. However, in the immediate future, we must address the idea that there might be a dark age lacking the touch of humanity in the 'thoughtless' processes.

#16 modelcadet

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Posted 25 April 2007 - 11:31 AM

Now, regarding the article:

I think this is great, and some of the implications (such as a good google for pictures and video) are quite obvious. Someone also mentioned the DARPA challenges, which is a very good point.

I am currently mulling over the application of this technology to 'real life object' tagging and databasing. With auto-tagging, tracking specific items and their history will become much easier. I read somewhere that "Web 3.0" might be this idea of an 'internet of things.' The author had mentioned having bar codes on items in grocery stores and whatnot. Anyway, when visual recognition gets to a specific point, bar codes won't even be necessary. The most obvious use for such tagging in this respect is to document the activities of individuals, which is at first somewhat scary.

I went to a military school for my last two years of high school: We had windows on all the doors, no dividers in the bathrooms, etc. As it stands, privacy is a right guaranteed by the Constitution. As we evolve, I notice the erosion (usually voluntarily) of privacy. I wonder if we'll come to a point where, accepting determinism and understanding our 'consciousness,' where we'll just say "f@#$ it."

I've been thinking about doing aurally what I've suggested above visually. Many researchers have done such for studying language acquisition in children. I might do it as a memory aid. Voice recognition isn't where it needs to be to adequately mine such data... but that's ok.

#17 danielrichard

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Posted 25 April 2007 - 01:36 PM

no dividers in the bathrooms, etc.

Do you mean between the stand-up stalls, or do you mean between the sit-down stalls? I don't know if I could go "number 2" with somebody sitting right next to me...

But you are right that privacy in general has been eroding. I'm against it personally, even though I know that technology is effectively making it inevitable. It's interesting to see your embracing attitude. Maybe it gives you a leg up on the society to come, where people like me who resist it will have a hard time coping.

#18 Live Forever

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Posted 25 April 2007 - 02:07 PM

The AI/robots taking over the economy has been discussed for decades, and it keeps getting closer. Even my job is under pressure.

I am not sure who the following ideas can be attributed to but I think it might be Marvin Minsky and Hans Moravec (maybe Rodney Brooks?). One of them said that having the entire economy taken over by bots would be like getting back our birth-rite. Back in the hunter-gatherer days, if you lived in a favorable climate with plenty of food and few predators, your life was basically liesure. If AIs do all the work then we can just relax.

Another one of those fellows compared the coming robot/AI revolution to an ocean that keeps rising. We humans are on a mountain and everytime the water rises we say "well, those jobs are repetitive and boring, we humans still do the important jobs". We keep saying that, but we cannot move any higher (bounded by evolution). We are at the top of the mountain, and the water keeps rising faster (AI keeps taking over more important jobs). The water will keep rising until it goes over our heads. Then what? Build a boat and live a life of liesure just floating around aimlessly in a vast ocean of AI? Or join forces with the ocean?

Thanks for those thoughts, Mind. I hadn't thought of it like that before. I suppose in the second scenario I would choose to join with the ocean and hope I didn't get dispersed out too much.

#19 knite

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Posted 25 April 2007 - 08:39 PM

I would say read Robert Heinlens "For Us, the Living". Basically we will need to stop placing so much importance on every person being productive. That book (while not about AI per se) gives a good clue to what may happen if we do get that much productivity per person, without anyone really having to do much.

#20 basho

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Posted 25 April 2007 - 08:56 PM

...having the entire economy taken over by bots would be like getting back our birth-rite. Back in the hunter-gatherer days, if you lived in a favorable climate with plenty of food and few predators, your life was basically liesure. If AIs do all the work then we can just relax.

I wonder, would this life of leasure be evenly distributed amongst the world's citizens? Or would we end up with a powerful ruling class in the nation that got there first, their dominance maintained by keeping the rest of the world in relative poverty?

#21 air90

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Posted 26 April 2007 - 12:04 AM

http://marshallbrain...otic-nation.htm Robotic Nation, by Marshall Brain. I'm sure many of you have read this article about the impact of robotics on society, but for those of you who haven't it summarizes the main points quite nicely and its a very worthwhile read.

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#22 Ghostrider

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Posted 29 April 2007 - 08:52 AM

I wonder, would this life of leasure be evenly distributed amongst the world's citizens?  Or would we end up with a powerful ruling class in the nation that got there first, their dominance maintained by keeping the rest of the world in relative poverty?


I think resources would be pretty much evenly distributed. Capitalism is only a method for distributing resources. It is supposed to allocate resources based on productive output. Those who produce the most get the most resources. However, if you can imagine infinite production, everyone having much more than they actually want, well, the excess just becomes free. In other words, there would end up being so many goods and resources that the goods and resources become very loosely allocated because their value becomes essentially worthless. Of course, there would be some limit to natural resources -- land, water, and dead animal meat.




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