Herself’s Artificial Intelligence

New insight into how brains process visual information is a double edged sword. It will make for much better vision engines but with that will come the failure of our most popular human test at the moment — captcha.

Using a fly, whose brain is heavily coded for visual information, Nemenman and his colleagues were able to show information is passed along the spikes in the fly’s brain neurons.

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Nemenman and his colleagues’ research is significant because it re-examines fundamental assumptions that became the basis of neuromimetic approaches to artificial intelligence, such as artificial neural networks. These assumptions have developed networks based on reacting to a number of impulses within a given time period rather than the precise timing of those impulses.

“This may be one of the main reasons why artificial neural networks do not perform anywhere comparable to a mammalian visual brain,” said Nemenman, who is a member of Los Alamos’ Computer, Computational and Statistical Sciences Division. “In fact, the National Science Foundation has recognized the importance of this distinction and has recently funded a project, led by Garrett Kenyon of the Laboratory’s Physics Division, to enable creation of large, next-generation neural networks.”

New understanding of neural function in the design of computers could assist in analyses of satellite images and facial-pattern recognition in high-security environments, and could help solve other national and global security problems. [ read more Language of a fly proves surprising ]

Papers:
PLoS: Neural Coding of Natural Stimuli: Information at Sub-Millisecond Resolution

More information:
Is Captcha’s moment passing?

Ah, but do we really want our computers to understand us? Anybody remember ‘Clippy’?

Computer: “You seem depressed today, should I Google Dr Kevorkian for you?”

Or will the clerks at the local retail store start wearing cameras with emotion recognizing software? A bit of customer understanding by the help would go a long way in many a business.

Researchers at the Department of Artificial Intelligence (DIA) of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid’s School of Computing (FIUPM) have, in conjunction with Madrid’s Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, developed an algorithm that is capable of processing 30 images per second to recognize a person’s facial expressions in real time and categorize them as one of six prototype expressions: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise.

Applying the facial expression recognition algorithm, the developed prototype is capable of processing a sequence of frontal images of moving faces and recognizing the person’s facial expression. The software can be applied to video sequences in realistic situations and can identify the facial expression of a person seated in front of a computer screen. Although still only a prototype, the software is capable of working on a desktop computer or even on a laptop. [ read more Facial Expression Recognition Software ]

How ever emotion recognition software gets used in the future this software is bound to be fun.

More information:
Video of software in action

Papers:
Jose Miguel papers ( $ )

See also:
Software recognizes anxiety in people

The Japanese are really going to make it much more fun to age. What is really cool is the technology for these glasses is well known and already available.

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Simply tell the glasses what you are looking for and it will play into your eye a video of the last few seconds you saw that item.

Built on to the glasses is a tiny camera which makes a constant record of everything the wearer sees: the tiny display inside the glasses identifies what is being scanned and a small readout instantly announces what the computer thinks the object probably is. For some things that look different from a range of angles, however, the glasses offer only a “best guess” – they are better at identifying a guitar and a chair than a coathanger or battery.
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The hardware itself is not extraordinary: what has taken Professor Kuniyoshi several years to perfect is the computer algorithm that allows the goggles to know immediately what they are seeing. It is, he says, a problem that has always vexed the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence.

But working in a team with Tatsuya Harada, one of Japan’s masters of the science of “fuzzy logic”, Mr Kuniyoshi believes he has cracked the problem. Behind the goggles is possibly the world’s most advanced object recognition software and a computer that can learn the identity of new objects within seconds.

So if the user wanders round the house for about an hour telling the goggles the name of everything from that coathanger to the kitchen sink, they will remember. Then if, at some point in the future, you ask them where you last saw a particular item, they will play the appropriate footage.

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[ read more The glasses that can help you find anything ]

See also:
Robots for old boomers (UMass project aims to assist aging population )