New Object Recognition Algorithm Learns On the Fly

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New Object Recognition Algorithm Learns On the Fly

Posted by samzenpus on Monday January 20, 2014 @07:47AM from the we'll-do-it-live dept.

Zothecula writes "Scientists at Brigham Young University (BYU) have developed an algorithm that can accurately identify objects in images or videos and can learn to recognize new objects on its own. Although other object recognition systems exist, the Evolution-Constructed Features algorithm is notable in that it decides for itself what features of an object are significant for identifying the object and is able to learn new objects without human intervention."

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I could be wrong... by barlevg · 2014-01-20 07:49 · Score: 2, Insightful

...but I don't think an evolutionary algorithm approach to pattern recognition is anything new.
1. Re:I could be wrong... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-20 07:57 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  The big news here is that it's being trained to detect bullshit. It's currently 0-10.
2. Re:I could be wrong... by medv4380 · 2014-01-20 08:16 · Score: 1
  
  Depends on what they mean by "evolution constructed". I assume that rather than have a human input the best guess at what features to look for, like eye spacing/nose placement, they use a Genetic Algorithm to narrow down to a good enough input. Still requires a person to load a bunch of pictures of air planes, and tell it to "learn" these objects. It's not really learning objects on its own, but rather learning which traits are best for identifying the object on its own.
  
  With our algorithm, we give it a set of images and let the computer decide which features are important.
  Without seeing their code that is my best guess from the article.
3. Re:I could be wrong... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-20 08:28 · Score: 0
  
  This is "evolution" announced by Brigham Young University. That's news.
4. Re:I could be wrong... by durrr · 2014-01-20 08:30 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  The way I understand it is that it identifies recurrent features and learns them. Meaning that giving it a huge image library with no labels would mean it can recognize say, roses, but it would call them "object 193131", not "rose".
5. Re:I could be wrong... by MLBs · 2014-01-20 08:31 · Score: 1
  
  The features part is really the tricky part. You could supply a set of pictures of aircraft and the algorithm would need to determine what is common to all those examples.
  With regards to training, It is possible to perform this learning task without direct supervised (tagged data) training.
  Imagine the following:
  Take a trillions of images from the web, and use unsupervised, clustering methods to group images into groups of equivalence, given that you have great features that allow you to do that.
  Then, given a cluster of millions of examples, take the surrounding text around the images source and try to find common denominators in the text. It's not far fetched to think that similar objects in the images will have similar words in the text.
  
  Such "Big Data" research is now being done in various research facilities around the world.
6. Re:I could be wrong... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-20 08:35 · Score: 0
  
  You can apply non-"new" concepts infinitely to non-"new" methods and make the argument that nothing is really "new" at all.
7. Re:I could be wrong... by Kookus · 2014-01-20 08:36 · Score: 1
  
  And it has figured out that all objects have been constructed from an all knowing being. Divine intervention if you will.
  http://aims.byu.edu/mission_statement
8. Re:I could be wrong... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-20 08:42 · Score: 0
  
  It all depends on whether this algorithm was intelligently designed.
9. Re:I could be wrong... by fatgraham · 2014-01-20 08:44 · Score: 2
  
  This can't be far off, I read a paper a while ago (still trying to find it, this post is a bit redundant without it) which would "detect" the capital of a country from how often they were found in text together. (Probably pre-loaded with country names, this would just have the image as the needle)
  I'm sure "Object 1387" and "Nyan cat" will soon be matched :)
10. Re:I could be wrong... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-20 08:47 · Score: 0
  
  Who is being shallow-minded, the guy who attends a religious school, but is still not afraid to explore evolutionary techniques, and manages to find a worthwhile scientific advancement, or the guy who attacks the school at the mere mention of its name?
11. Re:I could be wrong... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-20 08:54 · Score: 0
  
  Calm down, he just made a snarky remark on the institution's stupid beliefs.
12. Re:I could be wrong... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-20 08:59 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Well, you know what they say... "a rose by any other name would posess eigenvalues closely matching those of object 193131."
13. Re:I could be wrong... by climb_no_fear · 2014-01-20 09:02 · Score: 1
  
  "What's that mommy?" "Why, Jimmy, that's an airplane".
  I am not a programmer so could someone explain to me how that is different?
14. Re:I could be wrong... by Zalbik · 2014-01-20 09:13 · Score: 1
  
  Still requires a person to load a bunch of pictures of air planes, and tell it to "learn" these objects. It's not really learning objects on its own
  But that is exactly what people do. Other than a few hard-wired patterns (e.g. faces), we "learn" to recognize objects by being exposed to multiple examples of those objects and told the label to apply to them.
  Though the argument could be made that people don't learn on their own either...
15. Re:I could be wrong... by Tablizer · 2014-01-20 09:50 · Score: 1
  
  But how is that different from current AI?
  
  --
  Table-ized A.I.
16. Re:I could be wrong... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-20 09:51 · Score: 0
  
  Perhaps the news is that someone from Utah accepts the principles of evolution?
17. Re:I could be wrong... by timeOday · 2014-01-20 09:56 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  There is no way an image-based unsupervised algorithm can learn to recognize objects. "Shapes that frequently go together," yes. But what we consider "objects" is not an objective reality, it is a mental construct that is largely functionally-determined. It will never figure out all the different forms to which we ascribe the label "chair."
  Sitting on a street, a "bicycle" is an object because it is most like to be operated on as a unit. But to a bicycle mechanic, a bicycle is a collection of objects, such as a frame, a seat.. and so on because they need to decompose the "bicycle" construct to do their job. To somebody on an assembly line putting together bicycle seats, a seat is (at least initially) several different objects.
  So, truly unsupervised algorithms cannot do useful recognition - that is, classify objects the same way people do. (A robot that could experiment with its environment and learn to use "objects" could come closer).
18. Re:I could be wrong... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-20 09:57 · Score: 0
  
  For the record, the study of evolution has historically been one of the BYU Biology Department's strengths. The Mormon Church doesn't teach that evolution is wrong. Those who think it's funny to mock a group because of their cultural and ethnic heritage should try to do some evolving...
19. Re:I could be wrong... by medv4380 · 2014-01-20 10:23 · Score: 1
  
  Well the OP was asking about whether or not this is anything new, not about whether or not this was "AI" that was similar to being human. So your sarcasm is lacking proper context. To answer your sarcastic question with a questions, do you honestly believe that when you are told that an object is X that you generation a thousand different possible representations of that object then generate a "test" to see which set is closest to what you are seeing then jumbling the closest together again and again until you have a good match? How we actually learn is still a black box worth exploring. Pretending that we know how it fully works is a good way to never find out.
20. Re:I could be wrong... by JanneM · 2014-01-20 10:25 · Score: 2
  
  So, truly unsupervised algorithms cannot do useful recognition - that is, classify objects the same way people do.
  That's an overly narrow defintion of "useful recognition".
  
  --
  Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
21. Re:I could be wrong... by an+enormous+void · 2014-01-20 10:34 · Score: 1
  
  mismod...
22. Re:I could be wrong... by medv4380 · 2014-01-20 10:55 · Score: 1
  
  I don't see it that way because in the article and the BYU article the examples clearly lable a Tree a Tree, an Airplane an Airplane, and a Human a Human. Ether you're right and someone went though and relabeled the object ID labels with human readable versions, or you've given it more credit then then they are trying to take.
23. Re:I could be wrong... by maxwell+demon · 2014-01-20 11:08 · Score: 1
  
  But how is that different from current AI?
  Current AI would call it "object 0x2f26b".
  
  --
  The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
24. Re:I could be wrong... by maxwell+demon · 2014-01-20 11:13 · Score: 1
  
  Perhaps the news is that someone from Utah accepts the principles of evolution?
  He taught them to machines because he didn't manage to teach them to the people around him.
  
  --
  The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
25. Re:I could be wrong... by Lamps · 2014-01-20 11:18 · Score: 2
  
  The unsupervised algorithm discussed in the article seems to code some sort of visual input and, I'd infer, to perform clustering, which permits it to assign labels (i.e. let's say, 'tree', 'human', etc.) to objects it has encountered. It can use this schema which it has constructed to assign objects it hasn't seen before to a cluster - that is, it labels novel inputs in accordance with its schema. Thus, the algorithm 'recognizes' classes of objects. I'd imagine if you granularize the detail level of detail to which the algorithm pays attention, it can recognize (categories of one object)/particular instances of a general object category/a particular object.
  
  Sitting on a street, a "bicycle" is an object because it is most like to be operated on as a unit. But to a bicycle mechanic, a bicycle is a collection of objects, such as a frame, a seat.. and so on because they need to decompose the "bicycle" construct to do their job. To somebody on an assembly line putting together bicycle seats, a seat is (at least initially) several different objects.
  That goes way beyond the task of 'classifying objects', which is what the algorithm is intended to do. It's like expecting a mechanic to drive your vehicle for you once he has repaired it.
  
  So, truly unsupervised algorithms cannot do useful recognition - that is, classify objects the same way people do. (A robot that could experiment with its environment and learn to use "objects" could come closer)
  Sure, the algorithm doesn't entail a neurological equivalent of what humans to classify objects, but the effect is the same, no? Is not the task of accurately classifying objects useful in and of itself? For example, how would you build said robot that can manipulate objects in a useful fashion if it cannot recognize the objects in its vicinity?
26. Re:I could be wrong... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-20 11:40 · Score: 0
  
  Would they still smell as sweet?
27. Re:I could be wrong... by Tablizer · 2014-01-20 17:11 · Score: 1
  
  You are full of 483027!
  
  --
  Table-ized A.I.
28. Re:I could be wrong... by Zordak · 2014-01-20 17:38 · Score: 1
  
  Perhaps the news is that someone from Utah accepts the principles of evolution?
  That's cute and all. But my brother, who is a devout Mormon, got an MS in evolutionary biology. At BYU.
  
  --
  
  Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
29. Re:I could be wrong... by smallfries · 2014-01-20 19:02 · Score: 1
  
  Your logic is flawed.
  By splitting object-recognition into two cases...
  A: Atomic shapes
  B: Collections of shapes ... you have not proven that algorithms cannot perform object-recognition. You still need to show that one of the cases cannot be performed by an algorithm. As case A is trivial, and case B is what this algorithm does your argument falls apart. Collections of shapes can be recognised by probability of occurrence. There is no need for interactivity, simply enough video to reduce the impact of outliers.
  
  --
  Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
30. Re:I could be wrong... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-20 20:04 · Score: 0
  
  I'm surprised they're not using intelligent design.
31. Re:I could be wrong... by ozmanjusri · 2014-01-20 20:10 · Score: 1
  
  73 68 69 74
  
  --
  "I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
32. Re:I could be wrong... by fatphil · 2014-01-21 02:00 · Score: 1
  
  And a human who looks at a bike and says "that's a nice collection of different parts" isn't doing "useful recognition" either, in the eyes of most people.
  
  --
  Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
33. Re:I could be wrong... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-21 02:55 · Score: 0
  
  Take a trillions of images from the web...
  so 45% of the pictures will be porn, and the other 45% of cats. so it would have a 90% chance of being correct if it just guessed "pussy" for every picture.
34. Re:I could be wrong... by timeOday · 2014-01-21 03:42 · Score: 1
  
  If you used video, rather than images (or frames from images taken in isolation), and the video showed how things are used, then you could get somewhere. For example each grape in a bowl of grapes is an "object" for eating purposes whereas each bump on a raspberry is not, despite how visually similar those are.
Bah ... by gstoddart · 2014-01-20 07:50 · Score: 1

Let it loose at the Adult Entertainment Expo.
If it can figure out what half of that stuff is, it's a brilliant algorithm.
If not, it will probably be hilarious to see the results.

--
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
1. Re:Bah ... by K.+S.+Kyosuke · 2014-01-20 08:00 · Score: 2
  
  If not, it will probably be hilarious to see the results.
  Let me check...BYU...sex toys...yes, it probably would!
  
  --
  Ezekiel 23:20
Enhanced reality by Gaygirlie · 2014-01-20 07:59 · Score: 2

I know it's popular for people to immediately start with all the Terminator-claims and whatnot, but that's not the first thing that comes to my mind when reading stuff like this. Personally, I think of coupling this with something like e.g. Google Glass, so that you can tell the system to identify the item in the center of the view and then ask for it to automatically search for instructions on use or repair or whatnot. Even better if you have a device that covers both of your eyes so that the system can overlay things in your whole visual field, identifying things and showing their connections and whatnot.
1. Re:Enhanced reality by icebike · 2014-01-20 08:15 · Score: 2
  
  Like I've said in the past, mankind simply can't seem to stop itself from building Skynet piecemeal. Too dumb and trusting to think all those interesting things could ever be made into weapons or instruments of control.
  
  --
  Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
2. Re:Enhanced reality by Charliemopps · 2014-01-20 08:20 · Score: 1
  
  Governments are already building them into weapons. The question is, are we going to have the same arsenal? All this tech is coming, we can't just stick our heads in the sand and hope for sane competent leadership when it does arrive.
3. Re:Enhanced reality by barlevg · 2014-01-20 08:30 · Score: 1
  
  Why does everyone assume that our AIs are going to turn into Skynet? Why couldn't we end up with Tachikomas?
4. Re:Enhanced reality by MetalOne · 2014-01-20 08:42 · Score: 1
  
  If they are sentient, and require the same resources as humans, and are more intelligent than humans, it seems safe to assume they will want all the resources for themselves. If they are smarter, then its not hard to imagine them attempting to eliminate humans.
5. Re:Enhanced reality by icebike · 2014-01-20 09:29 · Score: 1
  
  But we can demand technology kill switches.
  Just as security was bolted onto the internet to make up for the lack of it being designed in, we shouldn't find ourselves in a position of having to bolt security onto our televisions, cars, and robotic servants.
  This particular algorithm has a lot of uses. We'd want that garbage sorting automaton to the entire system stop dead in its tracks when a human hand came through in the stream of cans and bottles and waste paper being dumped into the maw of a waste sorting facility. But we don't want machines roaming the streets looking for what might be an enemy soldier, and trying to distinguish between that and someone hanging the wash on the line to dry.
  
  --
  Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
6. Re: Enhanced reality by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-20 09:40 · Score: 0
  
  Why? Sentience does not imply self-interest or even survival instincts. To assume so is narrow-minded. The only reason biological species have those is that they'd otherwise be extinct.
7. Re: Enhanced reality by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-20 10:01 · Score: 0
  
  To be fair it doesn't have to be malicious. Anything with the ability to analyze, a lot processing power and a will to survive is going to be pretty dangerous if anyone is contemplating pulling the switch.
8. Re: Enhanced reality by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-20 13:25 · Score: 0
  
  To be fair it doesn't have to be malicious. Anything with the ability to analyze, a lot processing power and a will to survive is going to be pretty dangerous if anyone is contemplating pulling the switch.
  I think the main point was that it has not been established that a will to survive is necessary for intelligence.
  It's posible to imagine intelligent agents that are motivated by aims other than self preservation/propagation. Such agents would be poorly suited for surviving natural selection, but could easily exist as tools used by humans, especially if humans replace the ones that are destroyed in the furthering of their duties.
Evolution at BYU by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-20 08:02 · Score: 1

At least there's one professor at BYU that believes in evolution!
1. Re:Evolution at BYU by ComfortablyAmbiguous · 2014-01-20 08:27 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  At least there's one professor at BYU that believes in evolution!
  I understand why it might be tempting to put BYU in a basket along with the rest of the evangelical christian universities. However, on the issue of evolution it could not be more different. I graduated from there with a degree in microbiology and my college at least evolution was the coin of the realm, just like it is in any serious biology department. I did not have a single professor that did not see evolution as you might expect a biologist to see it; as the only serious explanation of the data at hand, the only theory that works with what we know and provides valid predictions of future results. Not once did I hear even the smallest bit of credibility being given to creationism or its various variants (intelligent design, etc).
  And yes, my professors were all Mormons. You might ask yourself how they square this. It turns out that while there are certainly Mormons that take a very literal reading of the bible on this issue, that is not the official church position, and there are many members that don't see it that way at all. Basically I had several professors that explained it as religion was about how to live life, science was about how life works, and we really have no idea how the two come together. The bible, while providing a lot of information to believers on a moral life, provides no real information on how the world works in any of the scientific fields.
  Interestingly, many believe this is on purpose, that God has no interest in proving his existence; it's a matter of faith for a reason. Because of this He stays out of offering scientific explanations. I realize that sounds distinctly like a cope-out, but frankly it leads to a fairly rational place where you can function as a scientist an still be a Mormon. And by function I don't mean some half-way hands over eyes sort of a way, but in a real, go where the evidence takes you sort of a way.
  Take it for what it's worth, but that was my experience
2. Re:Evolution at BYU by DownWithTheMan · 2014-01-20 09:37 · Score: 2
  
  I graduated from the Y too - and while most of my professors were not irrational about science, much of the student body was. I had a professor in a 100 level geology class who would start off most of his lectures by saying, "Now I know for some of you, your testimonies may tell you the earth is only such and such many years old. I'm not here to rock your testimonies or shake your faith, but simply to present scientific evidence as we understand it today."
  
  I laughed every time he had to make a disclaimer to the believers about the validity of his lectures (and then face-palmed myself for going to a school where so much of the student body sticks their heads in the sand).
3. Re:Evolution at BYU by ComfortablyAmbiguous · 2014-01-20 09:48 · Score: 1
  
  Yea, I expect if you signed up for biology you tended to get over that pretty quick, or generally dislike your life. It's easier to have an irrational viewpoint about science as an English major where you don't have to face it to function each day.
4. Re:Evolution at BYU by smoothnorman · 2014-01-20 09:52 · Score: 1
  
  "testimonies"? ...is that some specialized mormon terminology like being 'sealed' rather than married? i've read endless screeds about how one can make religion and science happily co-exist. but in the final analysis, it can't happen; at least not with standard faith-based religions. science essentially demands that nothing can be taken on faith; and religion essentially demands that anything important (the root of one's philosophical tree, if you will) must be taken on faith. if you're a faithful you cannot be a clear-minded scientist. i know this will be tediously countered, but faith is anti-science, and faith is the basis of religion.
5. Re:Evolution at BYU by fishybell · 2014-01-20 10:44 · Score: 1
  
  Indeed. "Testimonies" are very much along the lines of "I testify that I hold X/Y/Z ideas on faith." Every month (usually the first Sunday of each month) there is a special meeting fast and testimony meeting where members of the congregation get up and "bear their testimony." As a kid growing up with a dad teaching at BYU, these Sundays were the worst. They often dragged on longer than normal not just because church service ran longer, but the fasting portion of "fast and testimony" meant we were hungry all day until dinner.
  
  --
  ><));>
6. Re:Evolution at BYU by ComfortablyAmbiguous · 2014-01-20 11:18 · Score: 1
  
  I suppose this depends on a number of things, and perhaps in the end you may be right. But at the moment there really isn't a clear conflict; the conflict is more manufactured than real, especially if you see religion as a road to life happiness and not an explanation of all things. I admit that there is a certain about of dealing with ambiguity that is required. Frankly, I tend to be much more of an agnostic or a deist than your average Christian. I tend to believe that my life is mine to live, there is such a thing as a good way to live life from a happiness perspective, and my religion provides some guidance along those lines, but ultimately I have to figure it out for my own life
  So far as science is concerned I tend to think that we are very, very far from a complete understanding of the universe. There are so many things that we simply don't understand that I don't worry too much about conflict between the possibility of the existence of a God and what science is telling me. The evidence is what it is, we build theories to understand and predict it, and we use those to move forward, but I don't kid myself thinking that we have a complete understanding of the world around us. We will be working for a long time yet to get there.
  You could make an excellent argument you can only be clear minded about science or religion. That is to say, if your world is evidence based but you are willing to work with things where there is no evidence I think you can still be a clear minded scientist. On the other hand if you put assertions without evidence in the first place and try to work science around it you're going to have problems.
  If the religion is really real, the first approach will leave the two in agreement in the end, but if it is not true you aren't really in a bad place when you can see the whole picture. If you adopt the other approach inevitably you will end up with some kind of conflict that just doesn't leave room for thinking.
7. Re:Evolution at BYU by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-20 11:23 · Score: 0
  
  Your faith may be anti-science but there is a lot of real science done by people with real faith.
8. Re:Evolution at BYU by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-20 11:31 · Score: 0
  
  You have no idea of the bias you encountered in your science education because you have nothing to compare it to. The very definition of university came from the element of universality which is generally lost on non-secular schools.
9. Re:Evolution at BYU by smoothnorman · 2014-01-20 11:34 · Score: 1
  
  that reply is of the "but Einstein believed in God" sort. whereas i stated that religion is based on faith and faith is inconsistent with science. i did not state that someone who currently is willing to believe that a god is possible (even probable) cannot do good science; just that they cannot hold this belief in the face of contrary evidence, which is to say faith. faith accepts no evidence and cannot be placed aside for evidence. so "real science" (as you introduce the term) is entirely inconsistent with "real faith" (as you introduce the term). they are philosophically orthogonal concepts.
10. Re:Evolution at BYU by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-20 12:35 · Score: 0
  
  And you have no idea of the bias he did or did not encounter because you did not go to BYU and therefore cannot compare his experience with any other. BYU is consistently in the top few schools for number of grads who go on to get a PhD, many of those at the top-ranked schools in the U.S. So yes, many BYU grads have plenty of experience at other places to compare to.
  "which is generally lost on non-secular schools"
  How much experience do you have learning at a non-secular university? I'd bet exactly none.
11. Re:Evolution at BYU by kwbauer · 2014-01-20 13:29 · Score: 1
  
  So you, personally, have performed every experiment ever done? Or are you trusting (having faith) that somebody a bit smarter and/or with more resources than you has done so and not lied to you?
12. Re:Evolution at BYU by ComfortablyAmbiguous · 2014-01-20 15:50 · Score: 1
  
  It's easy enough to compare. It was not my last degree in sciences (others not at BYU), and I work in the field. Even during my undergraduate at BYU I had friends at several other significant universities, including MIT and Princeton. I took time off to spend a few week with each attending classes. I'm not looking at this from an isolated perspective.
On the fly, but.... by fatgraham · 2014-01-20 08:28 · Score: 3, Insightful

Does it work in real time? I can't find any more information than marketing buzz in the article (and the BYU article)...
Is there a paper or anything with a bit more [technical] detail?
1. Re:On the fly, but.... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-20 08:58 · Score: 0
  
  I went to the Professor's website and the only publication that matched the news is this one:
  http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031320313002549
2. Re:On the fly, but.... by FriendlyStatistician · 2014-01-20 08:59 · Score: 2
  
  Here's the journal article:
  http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031320313002549
3. Re:On the fly, but.... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-20 18:30 · Score: 0
  
  My non-machine visual recognition system identified the paywalled link you offered, and sadly I have found nothing else.
4. Re:On the fly, but.... by pmontra · 2014-01-20 19:50 · Score: 1
  
  I wonder... do they get paid to publish in those paywalled publications or they do it for free? Do they keep the copyright? If they do, why not publishing the article on the university site?
5. Re:On the fly, but.... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-20 20:03 · Score: 0
  
  How fast it runs, kind of depends on how much oomph you give it to doesn't it. Does it run realtime on your PC from year 2005, probably not. Can it run realtime if you have google datacenter to run it, or specialized asics or fpga solution, maybe? Point is to have a working algorithm, you can work on realistic implementation later.
6. Re:On the fly, but.... by FriendlyStatistician · 2014-01-21 02:25 · Score: 1
  
  Academic journals traditionally require the authors to assign the copyright to the publisher. The authors do not get paid directly, but publications are an important factor in tenure decisions and general academic prestige--"publish or perish."
  Some journals allow the authors to post the paper on their website, and some journals which do not technically allow it have generally ignored it in the past, but some publishers have been cracking down on the practice recently.
patentdead eyecon0meter by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-20 08:29 · Score: 0

nothing really new in centuries.. free the innocent stem cells.. never a better time to consider ourselves in relation to creation.... see you there
but but but but..... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-20 08:35 · Score: 0

...FANUC had this YEARS AGO!!!!
Here's what I hope they get by GoodNewsJimDotCom · 2014-01-20 08:38 · Score: 1

I would hope they'd get a sensor that would be able to identify new objects. Maybe let a robot pick it up, spin it around, get a 3d digitization model of the object then label it something temporary until someone tells it what it is. A quick look at how AI is probably going to be done when all the techs come together

--
God spoke to me
Paper? by StripedCow · 2014-01-20 08:41 · Score: 2

Anyone got a link to the actual paper?
I wonder if this can be used for image compression. Because if you know e.g. what a bicycle looks like, you don't have to compress it.

--
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
1. Re:Paper? by wagnerrp · 2014-01-20 08:52 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Data compression is often considered to be a key component of artificial intelligence. There is a competition that gives out prizes for compression of a sample of the Wikipedia database.
2. Re:Paper? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-20 10:00 · Score: 0
  
  yeah - wtf. the best presentation we can get on slashdot is some breathless content free tripe
  from gizmag?
  is there anyplace where we can get the same kind of stuff...but you know for real?
3. Re:Paper? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-20 10:40 · Score: 0
  
  http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031320313002549
4. Re:Paper? by Lamps · 2014-01-20 10:43 · Score: 1
  
  Is this the one? It doesn't appear that the researchers have posted a manuscript, and I'm not sure that Elsevier would take kindly to it if they posted the published draft (although many researchers do so anyway). That, along with a lack of public interest in reading articles upon which pop science articles (like the one in the link) are based, probably explains the lack of a link or reference to the original article. If you have access to a library that subscribes to Pattern Recognition, you can get the article.
5. Re:Paper? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-20 10:55 · Score: 0
  
  Published in Pattern Recognition Journal
  $35.95 for the paper
  Related papers from the research group.
it seems.... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-20 09:08 · Score: 0

it seems safe to assume they will want all the resources for themselves
Disguised failure to justify.
Not new by benob · 2014-01-20 09:20 · Score: 1

Nothing is performed on the fly. It's just another feature extraction and selection pipeline.
1) Deep Neural Networks also save the feature engineering step (for instance http://media.nips.cc/nipsbooks/nipspapers/paper_files/nips26/1210.pdf)
2) If as suggested by the title you are interested by on-the-fly object recognition, look at Tracking-Learning-Detection (TLD) (http://info.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/Z.Kalal/tld.html)
Hope it will not fail Tranny or Female test by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-20 09:22 · Score: 1

Hope it will not fail "Tranny or Female" test
On the fly? by wonkey_monkey · 2014-01-20 09:22 · Score: 1

New object recognition algorithm learns on the fly
I know wearable computing is the next big thing but putting one there - especially if it has a camera attached - is going to look a little bit... weird.

--
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
1. Re:On the fly? by maxwell+demon · 2014-01-20 11:23 · Score: 1
  
  No, they are making very small devices you'll not notice on the fly. And they'll add circuits to control the fly. The result will be a biological espionage drone which nobody will suspect.
  However people will try to kill it anyway.
  
  --
  The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
*Sigh* by Wootery · 2014-01-20 09:53 · Score: 3, Interesting

notable in that it decides for itself what features of an object are significant for identifying the object and is able to learn new objects without human intervention
For Christ's sake. The AdaBoost face-detection algorithm - the one that everyone uses today - does precisely this, and was developed in the the 90's.
1. Re:*Sigh* by Wootery · 2014-01-20 11:34 · Score: 1
  
  ...that's right, the the 90's...
2. Re:*Sigh* by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-20 21:12 · Score: 0
  
  Indeed, AdaBoost is one of the steps they use in the algorithm. The key thing is that it's not limited to face recognition.
3. Re:*Sigh* by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-20 21:47 · Score: 0
  
  Seems to that it still has rules to specify what is "face" to start with, not?
4. Re:*Sigh* by Wootery · 2014-01-20 22:17 · Score: 1
  
  No, all its knowledge about what constitutes a face is learned.
  There's a 'training' process, where the algorithm is fed a set of images of faces and another set of non-face images, and from there the algorithm determines what features it should be looking for to determine face from non-face.
  AdaBoost does face detection (is this a face?), not recognition (whose face is this?), however, so it's not quite as impressive as the algorithm in TFA, which is able to recognise lots of different types of objects.
5. Re:*Sigh* by Wootery · 2014-01-20 22:18 · Score: 1
  
  Indeed. My issue was with the poor reporting, not with the actual research.
PDF or it did not happen by jopet · 2014-01-20 09:56 · Score: 3, Insightful

Why should I get excited about something written by a journalist where there must be something writeen by scientists? Where is the PDF of the scientific paper to download?
What is the novelty of this algorithm? by Lamps · 2014-01-20 10:57 · Score: 1

First of all, is this the right paper?
It seems that the topic of the linked article is a new unsupervised algorithm that categorizes images. The linked article says that 'the Evolution-Constructed Features algorithm is notable in that it decides for itself what features of an object are significant for identifying the object', which unsupervised algorithms do implicitly, no? It is also stated that the algorithm 'is able to learn new objects without human intervention' - so if I'm interpreting this and the article's abstract correctly, the algorithm uses a novel approach to coding some sort of more or less raw image data which it receives as input? Otherwise, it appears that what makes the approach newsworthy is its extremely high accuracy, which was 95 to 100% on some measures. That sounds very good if the tests were representative of a real-world environment.
Especially since bicycle compression... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-20 11:11 · Score: 0

... in its traditional form is often quite painful, and in the highest compression ratios quite awkward to explain to a proctologist.
actual link to paper by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-20 14:02 · Score: 3, Informative

team,
fyi: http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/utils/getfile/collection/ETD/id/3021/filename/503.pdf
-me
1. Re:actual link to paper by pmontra · 2014-01-20 19:57 · Score: 2
  
  This is the paper. Please mod it up.
Move them goalposts Google Car haters! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-20 16:50 · Score: 0

Yeah I'm with ya on the Terminator stuff too. I'm just here, AC obviously, to tell all of the naysayers to go FUCK YOURSELVES! We're gonna get us our self driving cars and everytime someone throws out a stupid scenario of why the car couldn't figure it out, our superior innovation and intelligence overcomes. You anti-automated car guys can't use the excuse, well what if a baby moose if playing kickball behind a semi travelling 62mph while it's raining meteors. The answer would be this sensor package. We told you time and time again, where there's a will there's a way. You guys always bitch about solutions without a problem, but here we had a problem and we made a solution for it. Again, against all odds that the naysayers claimed we couldn't overcome. So now, robocar haters, go ahead and move your goalposts. Make up some new crazy scenarios, add some ludicrous constraints on the system, and just otherwise bemoan the loss of your freedumb. And when you make us painfully aware of all of those new scenarios, I'll be back on here pointing out your lunacy when we get the fix for that problem too.

*****This does not specifically apply to you, Gaygirlie. You're actually on my friends list so it probably doesn't apply to you at all. It's just you were the only thread even remotely talking about the positives and not armchair engineering all the reasons this isn't what it claims and can't do what it says. I see Icebike is present and hatin' as usual, so I'm sure he'll have some nutjob response to all of this.
Need better examples by Tablizer · 2014-01-20 17:20 · Score: 1

Perhaps if this was explained in terms of an example whereby you describe how existing AI uses or learns the training set and how the newfangled way does it different.

--
Table-ized A.I.
Here is the paper by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-20 20:48 · Score: 0

As far as I understand the paper is the one published on Pattern Recognition last December (paywalled): http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031320313002549 . I haven't read the paper.
Sounds like NEIL by jrincayc · 2014-01-21 01:10 · Score: 1

This sounds a lot like the Never Ending Image Learner project: http://www.neil-kb.com/ which is crawling the web and trying to extract visual knowledge.
1. Re:Sounds like NEIL by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-21 03:27 · Score: 0
  
  so it has a taste for cats and porn?
Actually... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-21 02:15 · Score: 0

They do teach that it doesn't apply to human beings, which is about as scientific as saying that it was actually a cylon/human hybrid that actually created humans....
Speaking of which...
Mild Sensationalism by AiTuDou · 2014-01-21 02:17 · Score: 1

Looks like a bit of click-bait sensationalism by Gizmag. This algorithm is a couple of years old, the new research is just related to a new paper on domain specific usage (classifying fish). It's an unsupervised genetic algorithm, that uses basic image processing steps as the genes, hence Gizmag trying to tout it as 'learning on its own'. It's a cool technique outright, but not as world changing as they make out.