The leading software packages in high speed facial recogniton are based upon feature extraction.
If the face is analyzed into lets say 30 features perhaps, then 30 processes could analyze the photo for these features in parallel. After that the 30 features are just looked up in a relational database against all the other features from the thousands of other images it has predigested. This is almost exactly the same methodology used to match fingerprints today by law enforcement agencies but of course the feature extraction is a lot more complicated. The government is pouring large amounts of money into this research for usage in terrorist identification at airports or other locations. Searching on "High Speed Facial Recognition" yields several companies already competing in this marketspace. -----Original Message----- From: Mike Tintner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, December 07, 2007 3:26 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] Do we need massive computational capabilities? Matt, First of all, we are, I take it, discussing how the brain or a computer can recognize an individual face from a video - obviously the brain cannot match a face to a selection of a billion other faces. Hawkins' answer to your point that the brain runs masses of neurons in parallel in order to accomplish facial recognition is: "if I have many millions of neurons working together, isn't that like a parallel computer? Not really. Brains operate in parallel & parallel computers operate in parallel, but that's the only thing they have in common".. His basic point, as I understand, is that no matter how many levels of brain are working on this problem of facial recognition, they are each still only going to be able to perform about ONE HUNDRED steps each in that half second. Let's assume there are levels for recognising the invariant identity of this face, different features, colours, shape, motion etc - each of those levels is still going to have to reach its conclusions EXTREMELY rapidly in a very few steps. And all this, as I said, I would have thought all you guys should be able to calculate within a very rough ballpark figure. Neurons only transmit signals at relatively slow speeds, right? Roughly five million times slower than computers. There must be a definite limit to how many neurons can be activated and how many operations they can perform to deal with a facial recognition problem, from the time the light hits the retina to a half second later? This is the sort of thing you all love to calculate and is really important - but where are you when one really needs you? Hawkins' point as to how the brain can decide in a hundred steps what takes a computer a million or billion steps (usually without much success) is: "The answer is the brain doesn't 'compute' the answers ; it retrieves the answers from memory. In essence, the answers were stored inmemory a long time ago. It only takes a few steps to retrieve something from memory. Slow neurons are not only fast enough to do this, but they constitute the memory themselves. The entire cortex is a memory system. It isn't a computer at all." [ON INtelligence - Chapter on Memory] I was v. crudely arguing something like this in a discussion with Richard about massive parallel computation. If Hawkins is right, and I think he's at least warm, you guys have surely got it all wrong. (although you might still argue like Ben that you can it do your way not the brain's - but hell, the difference in efficiency is so vast it surely ought to break your engineering heart). Matt/ MT: > Thanks. And I repeat my question elsewhere : you don't think that the > human brain which does this in say half a second, (right?), is using > massive computation to recognize that face? So if I give you a video clip then you can match the person in the video to the correct photo out of 10^9 choices on the Internet in 0.5 seconds, and this will all run on your PC? Let me know when your program is finished so I can try it out. > You guys with all your mathematical calculations re the brain's total > neurons and speed of processing surely should be able to put ball-park > figures on the maximum amount of processing that the brain can do here. > > Hawkins argues: > > "neurons are slow, so in that half a second, the information entering > your brain can only traverse a chain ONE HUNDRED neurons long. ..the > brain 'computes' solutions to problems like this in one hundred steps > or fewer, regardless of how many total neurons might be involved. From > the moment light enters your eye to the time you [recognize the > image], a chain no longer than one hundred neurons could be involved. > A digital computer attempting to solve the same problem would take > BILLIONS of steps. One hundred computer instructions are barely enough > to move a single character on the computer's display, let alone do something interesting." Which is why the human brain is so bad at arithmetic and other tasks that require long chains of sequential steps. But somehow it can match a face to a name in 0.5 seconds. Neurons run in PARALLEL. Your PC does not. Your brain performs 10^11 weighted sums of 10^15 values in 0.1 seconds. Your PC will not. > > IOW, if that's true, the massive computational approach is surely > RIDICULOUS - a grotesque travesty of engineering principles of > economy, no? > Like using an entire superindustry of people to make a single nut? > And, of course, it still doesn't work. Because you just don't > understand how perception works in the first place. > > Oh right... so let's make our computational capabilities even more > massive, right? Really, really massive. No, no, even bigger than > that....? > > > > > Matt,:AGI research needs > > >>> special hardware with massive computational capabilities. > > > > > > > Could you give an example or two of the kind of problems that your > > AGI > > system(s) will need such massive capabilities to solve? It's so good > > - in fact, I would argue, essential - to ground these discussions. > > For example, I ask the computer "who is this?" and attach a video clip > from my security camera. > ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?&; ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=74017226-785c65
