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DeepMind Self-training Computer Creates 3D Model From 2D Snapshots (ft.com)
DeepMind, Google's artificial intelligence subsidiary in London, has developed a self-training vision computer that generates 'a full 3D model of a scene from just a handful of 2D snapshots," according to its chief executive. From a report: The system, called the Generative Query Network, can then imagine and render the scene from any angle [Editor's note: the link maybe paywalled; alternative source], said Demis Hassabis. GQN is a general-purpose system with a vast range of potential applications, from robotic vision to virtual reality simulation. Details were published on Thursday in the journal Science. "Remarkably, [the DeepMind scientists] developed a system that relies only on inputs from its own image sensors -- and that learns autonomously and without human supervision," said Matthias Zwicker, a computer scientist at the University of Maryland who was not involved in the research. This is the latest in a series of high-profile DeepMind projects, which are demonstrating a previously unanticipated ability by AI systems to learn by themselves, once their human programmers have set the basic parameters.
I'm not sure why this is a big deal. MS had the tech for this about 5 years (Send us a buncha 2d pictures and we'll turn it into a VR set) extrapolating to models isn't that far of a reach.
It sounds like the key difference here is they're predicting parts of the scene they haven't seen, such as what the other side of an object they haven't seen looks like.
I don't know if they do that just based on clues like shadows, or the system says "that looks like the front of a sphere, therefore I can assume it's round on the other side as well."
I stole this Sig
Not only was that anticipated, and not only have computers been "teaching" themselves for years in AI once the basic parameters are set, that is exactly what neural networks were DESIGNED to do nearly 50 years ago when they were invented
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
This is something completely different than Photosynth. Completely.
At least just glance at TFA.