[Tyler]

Researchers Announce Advance in Image-Recognition Software
18 November 2014, 5:00 am

Scientists have created artificial intelligence software able to recognize the content of photos and videos with such accuracy that it can sometimes mimic humans..

Source: NYT > Artificial Intelligence

To visit any links mentioned please view the original article, the link is at the top of this post.

[Don Patrick]

It all sounded brilliant until I read this:

The programs were able to identify objects and actions with roughly double the accuracy of earlier efforts, although still nowhere near human perception capabilities.

Previous efforts (read: dumping images on a neural net and crossing fingers) resulted in 6% successful recognition of cat faces, and action recognition wasn't even looked at back then. Now that they've told the neural net to also label visual patterns as actions, it seems natural that the two would add up to 12%. As the report indicates, they used the same technique, just looking for different things.
I'm still waiting for the moment when someone starts guiding these things rather than hope they'll figure everything out on their own. There isn't "a" 2D visual pattern for cats, there's either a 3D model or a bunch of 2D patterns from all sides.

[Freddy]

There's this too...

During the past 15 years, video cameras have been placed in a vast number of public and private spaces. In the future, the software operating the cameras will not only be able to identify particular humans via facial recognition, experts say, but also identify certain types of behavior, perhaps even automatically alerting authorities.

So far as I know facial recognition is already being used at events like football matches to spot trouble makers.

[Don Patrick]

Hm, brief Googling says they are indeed using it at football matches, but are still half-depending on police officers to properly identify the faces the AI collects. Looks like they are mostly making a preselection of possible thugs by face recognition and still needs refinement in accuracy.

In the future, making silly faces will get you arrested

[Art]

Somehow I suddenly see the sales of those Guy Fawkes masks skyrocketing!!