[HN Gopher] AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li has a vision for computer vision
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       AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li has a vision for computer vision
        
       Author : samizdis
       Score  : 63 points
       Date   : 2024-12-12 20:46 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
        
       | yawnxyz wrote:
       | > Li: My lame example is if I have a flat tire on the highway,
       | what do I do? Right now, I open a "how to change a tire" video.
       | But if I could put on glasses and see what's going on with my car
       | and then be guided through that process, that would be cool. But
       | that's a lame example. You can think about cooking, you can think
       | about sculpting--fun things.
       | 
       | Kind of wild that the new Google AI demo app basically already
       | does this. It's hard to even imagine what's possible... we need
       | more future-dreaming sci-fi.
        
         | doublerabbit wrote:
         | Bye Bye fun.
         | 
         | They should really make it mandatory to know and demonstrate
         | you know how to change a wheel, check the oil dip-stick and all
         | basic car maintenance. That was the best part of owning the
         | car, knowing you were taking care of the car.
         | 
         | A part of cooking is experimenting. If we are now needing VR
         | goggles because you can't follow a recipe something has gone
         | terribly wrong.
         | 
         | I'd wager that these devices will take away skill rather than
         | gain. I know I'm not the VR generation, and very skeptically
         | annoyed for that all this is coming from Google, Microsoft and
         | co. Some things should be real and practical skills everyone
         | should know. The more we rely on such technology the more
         | failure that will come from it.
        
           | russdill wrote:
           | I mean sure, and the fun part of LEGO is making new
           | creations. But before you get to that point, building several
           | sets by instruction helps build associations of how to get
           | certain results.
           | 
           | For someone new to cooking, the recipe says "slice thinly"
           | and they have no idea if they are doing a good job or not.
           | They could simply ask an AI if they are doing good and it
           | could provide feedback.
        
           | darkwizard42 wrote:
           | Perhaps you might consider technology like this to help
           | assist folks in learning how to do complete basic car
           | maintenance. After all, the first time you changed a tire you
           | probably needed some kind of assistance. Similarly knowing
           | how to follow a recipe is one thing, but knowing what a soup
           | needs to adjust its color or taste is a skill which you can
           | help with.
        
           | outlore wrote:
           | How are VR goggles different from referencing a textbook,
           | Googling a tutorial or watching a YouTube video?
           | 
           | Perhaps it's the more instantaneous nature of it. Maybe you
           | are making the point that it is more advantageous to memorize
           | common life skills instead of needing a technical crutch. But
           | how often do we need to change a tire? And when we do,
           | wouldn't it be better to have the fastest reference guide?
        
           | citizenpaul wrote:
           | >And the whole part of cooking is experimenting.
           | 
           | Ummm no. Not unless you are already very knowledgeable and
           | experienced in cooking.
           | 
           | I cook nearly every meal I eat BTW.
        
             | kjrfghslkdjfl wrote:
             | Same, and I hate "experimenting" cooking. I memorize simple
             | recipes and do them a lot.
             | 
             | I don't wanna experiment cooking, I want to have eaten.
        
             | doublerabbit wrote:
             | I cook every meal I eat too. Tonight is Egg,Feta,Red
             | Pepper, pie with a rosemary base.
             | 
             | > Not unless you are already very knowledgeable and
             | experienced in cooking.
             | 
             | I disagree. The only knowledge is knowing what ingredient
             | to add what to effect the flavor. Sweetness, sourness,
             | punch, hotness.
             | 
             | Which yes, AI could provide you with, however any search
             | engine can or even a decent cooking book. It's not new.
             | 
             | Maybe AI is the new cooking book, but you sure not going to
             | get a decent flavor compared from a well written recipe
             | from a book.
        
             | Facemelters wrote:
             | yeah most people just want to make food that is healthy and
             | tastes good. Perfectly happy to follow a recipe like a LEGO
             | kit.
        
           | kelseyfrog wrote:
           | If we are now needing VR goggles because we can't make irl
           | friends, something has gone terribly wrong.
        
           | ugh123 wrote:
           | > That was the best part of owning the car
           | 
           | > And the whole part of cooking is experimenting.
           | 
           | Both seem out of touch
        
             | Facemelters wrote:
             | yeah the best part of cooking is eating
        
             | doublerabbit wrote:
             | You took pride in your car. If it was your car, you saved
             | up for and not one your parents bought you you had a
             | connection. You knew you were looking after it. I've never
             | had fancy cars, they were almost in the state of rust
             | buckets. People used to knock their doors in to it because
             | "it's old, I mustn't care".
             | 
             | No, I saved money to buy that car. It's a feeling you just
             | can't experience without looking after the car practically.
             | The feeling of changing the oil and hearing the different
             | it made.
             | 
             | The principle of saving and owning things too is gone.
        
               | Philpax wrote:
               | This is your experience, but I'm not sure you can
               | generalise it to most people's experience. I like cars -
               | admire them, even - but my car was first and foremost a
               | tool, and my relationship with it was as such. I did the
               | work required to keep it running, but I didn't want to
               | spend more time than that on it. Ditto my 3D printer.
               | 
               | There are a lot of things that I'm willing to give the
               | personal touch to, but there are many things where I just
               | don't care and just want it to work, and you can't know
               | ahead of time what that is for everyone.
               | 
               | Given that, I'm more than comfortable with giving
               | everyone the tools to Not Give A Shit:tm: for any given
               | subject - if they want to experiment, they will, but that
               | burden shouldn't be pushed onto everyone for every
               | subject. After all, time spent on things you don't care
               | about is time you can't use on the things you _do_ care
               | about.
        
           | 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
           | No accounting for taste.
           | 
           | My favorite part of owning a car is when the automatic
           | transmission shifts for me, and when the ABS pumps the brakes
           | for me.
        
           | gdhkgdhkvff wrote:
           | The arguments that you're making can be made for literally
           | any useful piece of technology ever.
           | 
           | Eye glasses? They'll make you too reliant on sight!
           | 
           | Computer? The best part about writing is maintaining your
           | typewriter!
           | 
           | If you need a car because you can't ride a horse something
           | has gone terribly wrong.
           | 
           | "I know I'm not the VR generation". Sounds good. Then you
           | don't need to complain into the either about nothing.
        
           | ishtanbul wrote:
           | AI will help us develop technology to explore the universe
           | and solve climate change, and access virtually unlimited
           | energy. Everyone will have superpowers. Sounds awesome and
           | very fun.
        
           | frereubu wrote:
           | I find these kinds of responses interesting. It's not like
           | you _have_ to use these glasses, so this isn 't really about
           | you. It's about what you think other people _should_ do, but
           | _should_ s are kinda funny. Why _should_ someone know how to
           | change a wheel? Why _should_ people experiment with cooking?
           | You 're telling people what they _should_ enjoy, but that 's
           | a bit weird isn't it?
        
             | doublerabbit wrote:
             | > Why should someone know how to change a wheel?
             | 
             | Because if your car tyre blows out on the motorway causing
             | a an accident because you didn't check the pressure. You
             | should of known that by not checking your wheel, even just
             | kicking it to gauge the pressure.
             | 
             | > Why should people experiment with cooking?
             | 
             | I'm not saying should. If people like simple food, great.
             | If people want dead food like McD, fine.
             | 
             | I find the best part of cooking is experimenting. Making
             | the same cheese toastie over and over again gets boring.
             | The same with pizza.
             | 
             | > You're telling people what they should enjoy
             | 
             | No I'm not. I'm not telling you shouldn't be on HN right
             | now. I'm saying there are definitely should's in life you
             | should know without needing some sort of technological
             | device. Like how to look after your car so you don't cause
             | a catastrophe.
             | 
             | Should an airline not look after their aeroplanes? Boeing
             | didn't and look what happened.
        
               | exe34 wrote:
               | > should of known
               | 
               | You should _have_ looked into grammar and spelling before
               | you started posting on the internet.
        
               | Philpax wrote:
               | I disagree with the parent poster (as I've replied
               | elsewhere) but this is a boring and facile response. Do
               | better.
        
               | cameronh90 wrote:
               | What does checking the tyre pressure have to do with
               | changing a wheel? Most people do know how to check their
               | tyre pressure, but have never had to change a wheel. My
               | car doesn't even have a spare tyre. If my tyre
               | catastrophically fails in a way the emergency puncture
               | repair kit can't fix, I'm just calling the recovery
               | service. It might set me back a few hours, but I haven't
               | even had a puncture in 15 years of driving so I'll take
               | the hit.
               | 
               | Moreover, what does it matter if someone knows how to
               | check their tyre pressure, provided they know that it
               | needs to be checked to keep the car safe, and where to
               | take it to get it checked? Most garages here will do
               | those sort of basic checks for free.
        
             | Teever wrote:
             | These kinds of responses _seem_ interesting but they really
             | aren 't.
             | 
             | It's just a modern variant of an old man yelling at
             | progress and being a crotchety contrarian for contrarians
             | sake.
             | 
             | All too often the basis of these kinds of arguments are a
             | just-so fallacy where the person using them is oblivious to
             | the fact that generations prior to them would look at their
             | skill-set and the skills that they promote as the best as
             | worse than the ones they had.
             | 
             | The people making these arguments just want to tell
             | everyone that they're better than the kids today and
             | everything is going to pot.
        
         | XorNot wrote:
         | Weird to contextualize this as "put on glasses".
         | 
         | Like, I have a cellphone with a high resolution camera in my
         | pocket - it would be more then enough to be able to have it
         | image recognize the parts I should be looking for and highlight
         | which bolt I undo next (and ideally, hint and show an arrow if
         | I'm looking at the wrong thing).
         | 
         | One of my primary uses of YouTube videos over service manuals
         | is just to confirm that when it says "undo the secondary
         | philangy bolts" that I'm clear on exactly what that is.
         | 
         | That said, I don't even think that's the key use-case: the key
         | use-case would be letting those YouTubers include the image
         | tags to the right part of the video, since half the benefit is
         | seeing someone who's done it show how they do it, and how they
         | move and place the parts (which usually avoids some "buy
         | Manufacturer Service Tool 3 and 19 to undo intermediate part
         | 81).
        
         | vunderba wrote:
         | I've been extolling the educational (and entertainment)
         | possibilities of lightweight portable A.R. ever since the first
         | prototypes of Google Glass.
         | 
         | - Imagine being able to look down at a breadboard, and have it
         | overlay explanations, diagrams, realtime current flows, etc.
         | 
         | - Anyone in the UNIVERSE who has ever had to learn card
         | manipulation, juggling from a book or even a video knows how
         | annoying it is to have to _mentally reverse_ the picture in
         | your head while trying to learn it. Imagine putting a person in
         | front of you who is juggling (mills mess, box pattern, etc) and
         | slowing it down to exactly see how to learn it.
         | 
         | - Imagine being able to practice drawing by putting a model of
         | any human in the center of your room, and walk around it as you
         | sketch on actual canvas.
         | 
         | - Imagine being able to head to the nearest open soccer field,
         | and throw down a bunch of ninjas throwing ninja stars at you,
         | and you have to physically duck and weave while running full
         | tilt down the field.
         | 
         | These took me a grand total of 10 minutes to think of. Anyone
         | who doesn't understand the potential of AR simply lacks vision.
         | (no pun intended)
        
           | makk wrote:
           | > Anyone who doesn't understand the potential of AR simply
           | lacks vision.
           | 
           | I see your point.
        
           | readyplayernull wrote:
           | Expanding on that, what would happen if we had immediate
           | access to the knowledge required to perform any job?
           | 
           | I like this prediction by Alvin Toffler:
           | 
           | > People of post-industrial society change their profession
           | and their workplace often. People have to change professions
           | because professions quickly become outdated. People of post-
           | industrial society thus have many careers in a lifetime. The
           | knowledge of an engineer becomes outdated in ten years.
           | People look more and more for temporary jobs.
           | 
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Shock
           | 
           | Instead of "losing" jobs by AI (ok, some tasks of those will
           | be replaced), there will be re-mixed jobs: dev-designers?
           | medic-programmers? more and more specialized branches of
           | every permutation.
        
           | hotstickyballs wrote:
           | It needs to be much more mainstream (going down in cost and
           | being more portable will help) but there's already AR piano
           | teaching and what not.
        
         | penjelly wrote:
         | are we limited though to waiting for glass though? can't we
         | already do these things via a lens like Google lens? I get the
         | ergonomics of the glasses is key, but we don't have the
         | software to do these things elegantly on a lens yet do we? But
         | there's nothing stopping us working on them even without the
         | hardware.
        
           | parl_match wrote:
           | It really sucks to do this stuff with only one hand. Not to
           | mention, the mental load of focusing your phone.
        
       | dang wrote:
       | Recent and related:
       | 
       |  _A stubborn computer scientist accidentally launched the deep
       | learning boom_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42106623 -
       | Nov 2024 (39 comments)
       | 
       |  _The deep learning boom caught almost everyone by surprise_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42057139 - Nov 2024 (188
       | comments)
        
       | kjrfghslkdjfl wrote:
       | I think she's obviously right.
       | 
       | The reason that cars make stupid mistakes that a human never
       | would, is that cars are trained to classify 2D images (and act
       | accordingly). Humans on the other hand have a 3D model of the
       | world that understands what is and isn't possible, and are
       | trained to map 2D images to that 3D space.
       | 
       | The world is 3D so obviously the latter approach works way
       | better.
        
       | jazzyjackson wrote:
       | I found out about Fei Fei Li when Computer History Museum hosted
       | her for an interview on her life's work (1hr 16m)
       | https://youtu.be/JgQ1FJ_wow8
        
       | aynyc wrote:
       | It seems to me, her example is a way of saying, write better
       | documentation/manuals. Better recipes, better car tire change.
        
       | newbie578 wrote:
       | I might be rude for this comment, but can anyone explain what did
       | Fei-Fei Li accomplish in AI to be considered a pioneer?
       | 
       | I read her autobiography and I still do not understand. The only
       | thing she did was create the ImageNet dataset, by paying Amazon
       | Mechanical Turk. Am I missing something? I don't understand how
       | is she in the same breathe as Cunn, Goodfellow, Hinton, even
       | Karpathy?
        
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