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Video Games Are So Realistic That They Can Teach AI What the World Looks Like (vice.com)
Jordan Pearson, reporting for Motherboard:Thanks to the modern gaming industry, we can now spend our evenings wandering around photorealistic game worlds, like the post-apocalyptic Boston of Fallout 4 or Grand Theft Auto V's Los Santos, instead of doing things like "seeing people" and "engaging in human interaction of any kind." Games these days are so realistic, in fact, that artificial intelligence researchers are using them to teach computers how to recognize objects in real life. Not only that, but commercial video games could kick artificial intelligence research into high gear by dramatically lessening the time and money required to train AI. "If you go back to the original Doom, the walls all look exactly the same and it's very easy to predict what a wall looks like, given that data," said Mark Schmidt, a computer science professor at the University of British Columbia (UBC). "But if you go into the real world, where every wall looks different, it might not work anymore." Schmidt works with machine learning, a technique that allows computers to "train" on a large set of labelled data -- photographs of streets, for example -- so that when let loose in the real world, they can recognize, or "predict," what they're looking at. Schmidt and Alireza Shafaei, a PhD student at UBC, recently studied Grand Theft Auto V and found that self-learning software trained on images from the game performed just as well, and in some cases even better, than software trained on real photos from publicly available datasets.
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I wonder what the AI would think of Doom as the monsters hide behind secret wall panels and jump out from behind to attack?
Says the guy who doesn't know the difference between quite and quiet. Not to mention that a winking emoji is not a proper way to close a sentence. Just to be clear: you're missing a period there, Mr. not-a-fucking-idiot.
Although you are right about the poor quality of what passes for "research" nowadays, people need to realize that there are limits to technology. It doesn't increase in power and get better and better indefinitely. There are limits based on Physics and engineering. Particularly with digital computers we are hitting those limits now. CPUs in particular are only getting marginally faster with each (expensive) generation.
So, on one side, you have the game program converting conceptual objects from a database to 3D images, using a powerful GPU in the process.
And in the other side you have the AI program taking that 3D image and converting it to a conceptual object, and putting it in a database, using a powerful GPU in the process.
And then you wonder about global warming.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Good. We need AI that can correctly identify a person as a prostitute and various fictional weaponry and automobiles.
Google should train an AI to drive using GTA and stick it in one of their cars. It will drastically reduce the time it will take to train autonomous vehicles.
It isn't the hardware that's the problem - it's the software and the Wetware
Faster processors can help a little, but better algorithms are what is required. Apparently there is no money in AI. The best minds of our generation are being paid to work out how to get a user to click on an advert.
The SR-71 is still the fastest plane ever built.
That doesn't mean that it's not possible to build a faster plane. There's no reason to build one at this point. You don't need a plane capable of outrunning any missile when you can take pictures with a satellite instead. You don't even need a plane that fast for carrying people when we haven't even attempted to handle the legislation involved with supersonic passenger travel. We didn't lose any capability after the SR-71 was retired, the capability had already been replaced by the time the last ones were laid up.
And, there most definitely are faster aircraft than the SR-71. The SR-71 is the fastest manned air-breathing aircraft. There are faster manned aircraft that are not air-breathing (mach 6.7 X-15), and there are faster air-breathing aircraft that are not manned (mach 9.6 X-43).
The SR-71 met a specific goal at a certain time and performed exceedingly well at that mission, but we haven't replaced it with a better plane because we don't need one. That's like saying that naval scientists or shipbuilders have lost their art because the last battleship was launched in 1944. We just don't need them anymore.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
An interrogatory sentence should end with a question mark.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Now the fleets of self driving cars will be sipping "hot coffee" and beating the hookers to collect their money back for services rendered.
They will also know how to rack up a respectable 5 start wanted level and just hide under a bridge till it all goes away.
Oh, and my favorite new autonomous feature? Spawning attack choppers out of thin air to aid in robbing every convenience store in the city while performing the above two tasks.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
You don't even need a plane that fast for carrying people when we haven't even attempted to handle the legislation involved with supersonic passenger travel.
Uh, Concorde? From what I understood it's the market that killed it, with modern communication via email and video conferencing the business market became considerably smaller. You of course have the luxury market but they don't necessarily travel between major business hubs very often, they're often going more exotic places. It needs economic solutions to bring the cost down and technological solutions for the sonic boom so it can go over land and not be such a special case, the legislation is the least problem.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Realistic enough to work as a proxy for reality, but not realistic enough to fool an alert observer. Apparently you don't know the difference between "works" and "perfect". There's usually quite a gap.
Learn to love Alaska
There is a problem with our scientists today.
The problem is capitalism. Optimizing for cost gets a technically inferior solution.
The SR-71 is still the fastest plane ever built.
It's the fastest manned aircraft that launches from the ground under its own power and runs on JP-7 fuel. Remove any one of those constraints, and there is something faster, though none are in use, as they are too expensive, and anything you can do with an SR-71, you can do cheaper with a drone or satellite. The SR-71 existed so that we could take pictures without losing pilots. Drones fit that bill and are much cheaper.
Concorde is our best plane.
Grounded because they were expensive and delicate. They were inferior to a 777 in every way, other than travel time.
Learn to love Alaska
Where is the "dead end" with moore's law? When will we hit it? We have enough compute power for AI. What we don't have is a good algorithm.
Learn to love Alaska
They are already planning for that. The codename for the AI has just been published, it's "Christine".
Sounds really nice!
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
Although you are right about the poor quality of what passes for "research" nowadays, people need to realize that there are limits to technology. It doesn't increase in power and get better and better indefinitely. There are limits based on Physics and engineering. Particularly with digital computers we are hitting those limits now. CPUs in particular are only getting marginally faster with each (expensive) generation.
The brain is a parallel system. Computers are getting more parallel. There's a long way to go before we throw up our hands and say "this is impossible". If you were running the show we'd never have got out of the caves.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The legislation is a major man-made problem. If you have planes flying all over the country producing sonic booms, people are going to sue and that's what is going to stop it. Your suggestion of a technological solution to stop the sonic boom sounds great, but I don't see how that's possible without engines producing virtually no sound yet still strong enough to propel something several hundred tons faster than the speed of sound.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
The Talos Principle is coming to life!