Monday, October 17, 2016

From an article about Apple hiring AI experts

"Salakhutdinov has published extensively on neural networks, a branch of AI critical for voice and image recognition technology..." [here]

The word "critical" is incorrect and shows the risk of sucking on the bottle of Neural Nets. I am familiar with applying Neural Nets to all of the kinds of image recognition tasks I have encountered in my career*, and I have always felt that neural nets are a disappointment. My whole program is about the necessity for model based recognition. For years, companies like Cognex sold image recognition systems using simple template matching - let alone anything sophisticated. Those work fine, within limits, and use no neural nets.

(*) Including gray scale 2D video in general; video microscopy; character recognition; semiconductor defect recognition; and defect pattern detection; 3D feature recognition.

Update: Also reading about Apple dropping its efforts to develop self-driving cars. Is it that they could not get their neural networks to work, so they are doubling down on that technology? Since AI innovation is not going to come from that direction, I wonder whether there is now no one at Apple with a broad enough technical vision that they are listening to the conventional wisdom about how AI is supposed to be done? In any case it is time to sell your Apple stock and buy IBM.

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