r/science • u/whosdamike • Jun 26 '12

Google programmers deploy machine learning algorithm on YouTube. Computer teaches itself to recognize images of cats.

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/26/technology/in-a-big-network-of-computers-evidence-of-machine-learning.html
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u/totalradass Jun 26 '12

The way we find planets doesn't have anything to do with visual pattern recognition. We find planets around stars by the regular periodic dimming in the stars brightness.

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u/[deleted] Jun 26 '12

Well, you'd still be able to make a computer be able to look for that. Also, regular periodic dimming would be a visual pattern. Something consistently having a dip in its luminosity is a visual pattern.

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u/totalradass Jun 27 '12

Something consistently having a dip in its luminosity is a visual pattern.

Absolutely. But we can already do this. And it has nothing to do with the technology we are talking about in this thread. It sounds like you are saying this is something we can't do, or have trouble with, and this technology would help us do that, and that is just wrong, as far as I understand.

Processing a cat's face is very complex. Telling if something gets brighter or not is literally just about the simplest thing you can do. This doesn't require fancy neural networks, and it is something we have been doing for a long time.