How close are we to solving vision?

Re:How close are we to solving vision? by unlikelymordant on Sunday November 13, 2016 @06:46AM (#12942907)

The visual cortex in the brain (which is the physical analogue of the conv nets) is not the whole brain, it is really just a feature extractor for the rest of the brain. So saying that 'vision is not solved' and 'so much for superhuman performance' is not really news, the performance is superhuman on the particular dataset, that is all. You still need the rest of the brain to reason about the inputs and correct weird errors. These results are a stepping stone to better results on harder datasets. I have a feeling people will be saying 'vision is not solved' until general AI is realised (which in a sense is true, but discounts the very real progress being made today).

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Re:How close are we to solving vision? by erikpukinskis on Sunday November 13, 2016 @04:46PM (#12945848)

I would go further and say that the visual cortex and the rest of the brain are really just feature extractors for the body to use. And without a lifetime of embodied experience, neither can "vision" be solved nor can "general AI" be realized.

It's impossible to really see something unless you have the opportunity to interact with it (or things like it). It's impossible to understand something unless you have the opportunity to interact with it (or things like it). Without interaction there can be no intelligence. The best you can do is have an intelligent being (the human researcher) train a computer to mimic intelligent action in a constrained environment. But there is no path from there to general intelligence without interaction.

And there is no interaction without a body of some shape. The body can be virtual, and needn't look like a human body, but there needs to be a set of actuators which cause realtime changes in the input space.

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Re:How close are we to solving vision? by unlikelymordant on Tuesday November 15, 2016 @08:45AM (#12957883)

> Without interaction there can be no intelligence. And there is no interaction without a body of some shape.

I disagree fully. Can a person born quadriplegic not be considered intelligent simply because they can't interact with things? They can interact by communicating, same as a computer can.

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Re:How close are we to solving vision? by erikpukinskis on Tuesday November 15, 2016 @01:03PM (#12960437)

A quadriplegic has a body, they can move their head, mouth, eyes, etc, and those things can influence the world. That constitutes a perception action loop which is a basic requirement for intelligence.

An AI without any actuators is more like a fully paralyzed person.

A baby which was born totally paralyzed would in fact be profoundly retarded and they would be unable to communicate or form anything resembling intelligence. See http://io9.gizmodo.com/the-seriously-creepy-two-kitten-exper...

An AI with vocal cords and a microphone in the real world has a body.

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Re:How close are we to solving vision? by posterboy on Sunday November 13, 2016 @08:34AM (#12943227)

>You still need the rest of the brain to reason about the inputs

Specifically, you need the rest of the brain to know what to look for and where, so "vision" is not really a separable facility, agreed.

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