The Elephant in the Room

A recent issue of Quanta Magazine addressed the elephant in the room afflicting the artificial intelligence community --  if you put an actual elephant in a room, then virtually all advanced computer vision software goes haywire. Some neural networks will label the animal a "big gray dog" or a "wrinkled trunk couch", but most of the algorithms will just simply shut down when presented with the pachyderm paradox. You see the programs' standard method of breaking an image down into layers to help them classify objects by probability vectors made them unprepared for the unexpected.  Apparently, they all lacked the ability to do a double take when looking at the image before saying " What the... Why is there an elephant in that room?"  

Therefore, while robots may be faster at assembling cars and artificial intelligence may be superior at playing chess, this computing conundrum proves that there hasn't been a gadget invented yet that is better at making sense out of nonsense than the human brain.

Whatever you do, don't show this picture to a computer, because it will freak the heck out.
Read More >>