It hopes the technology - a blend of
artificial intelligence and machine-learning - will be able to help blind
people "see" images by enabling our computers to distinguish what is
in a picture.
It's an incredibly sophisticated task. Next
month, the company says it will present a paper detailing the progress it has
made so far.
"Our AI research efforts - along with
our work to develop radical new approaches to connectivity and our work to
develop immersive new VR technologies - are a long-term endeavour," wrote
Mike Schroepfer, Facebook's chief technology officer.
"But if we can get them right we will be
able to build systems that are smarter and more useful, enable developers to
create immersive new experiences, and make it possible to connect everyone in
the world."
Dog spotter
I'll look in more depth at Facebook's work
when that paper is made public. But first I wanted to share a little anecdote
that hints at just how smart Facebook's AI is becoming. Or how scary it's
becoming, depending on your point of view.
 |
| Facebook says its AI system can pick out dog breeds almost instantly |
About a month ago I spent a morning at
Facebook's new building in Menlo Park, catching up on various areas of the
social network's research - one of which was AI.
My guide showed me the image recognition
system by handing me a pile of pictures of dogs. Each was a different breed.
I held up a picture of a Border Collie, and
the machine would think for a moment before saying "Border Collie".
Picture of a German Shepherd… a moment's
pause... "German Shepherd".
It recognised each dog almost instantly.
OK, very smart. But feeling sceptical, I
wondered if the machine was just looking out for the specific picture - which
is simple - rather than having a knowledge of dog breeds.
So I loaded up a photo of a friend's bulldog
on my phone, to see if the machine was smart enough to figure it out.
I held it up, the computer thought about it
for a moment, and then it said...
"Smartphone."
Dave 0, Robot 1.
-(BBC)
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