3 ms·

> The human vision system operates at a bitrate equivalent of well beyond 500 gigabits per second Do you have a source for this claim? Academic sources suggest

> The human vision system operates at a bitrate equivalent of well beyond 500 gigabits per second Do you have a source for this claim? Academic sources suggest numbers 4-5 orders of magnitude smaller: 6Mbps [1], 10Mbps [2]. [1] The Oxford Companion to the Mind (1987) [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1564115/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1564115/

semi-extrinsic 5y ago
Alright, I should clarify, as my first post was a bit sloppy. We know the eye has highly nonuniform resolution, with the high resolution region moving around all the time to cover areas of interest. I agree this system has something like 10 Mbps actual bitrate. But we don't know how to make such a system for computer vision. Our CV systems all have uniform resolution. And thus a CV system needs to match the peak resolution of the human vision system. That requires a ~500 megapixel resolution at 24 bits per pixel and ~50 frames per second.
- CrazyStat 5y ago
  Thanks for the clarification. I still don't fully buy the argument. An AI driver doesn't necessarily need to match or exceed a human driver's sensors in order to drive as well or better. The human eye does indeed have very impressive resolution and tracking, but the ability to attend to a certain area of interest also means that you miss things in other areas. Instead of using the human as the reference point, we can turn the question around and ask instead: given a video feed from a current generation Tesla, would a human be able to drive safely? I would suggest yes, though it would take some adjustment from existing driving habits. If a human could do it with Tesla's current sensors then an AI almost certainly can eventually do better with the same sensors. I actually think the bigger issue with Tesla's approach (and I say this as a generally happy Tesla owner... though the timing is terrible since it had to be towed to the service center today) is their insistence on minimal maps/local data for driving. I understand why they want to do that for scaling purposes, but there are lots of intersections that are confusing for your average human the first time they come to it. I expect figuring out the traffic pattern in a confusing intersection is the harder AI problem.

semi-extrinsic 5y ago

Alright, I should clarify, as my first post was a bit sloppy. We know the eye has highly nonuniform resolution, with the high resolution region moving around all the time to cover areas of interest. I agree this system has something like 10 Mbps actual bitrate. But we don't know how to make such a system for computer vision. Our CV systems all have uniform resolution. And thus a CV system needs to match the peak resolution of the human vision system. That requires a ~500 megapixel resolution at 24 bits per pixel and ~50 frames per second.

CrazyStat 5y ago
Thanks for the clarification. I still don't fully buy the argument. An AI driver doesn't necessarily need to match or exceed a human driver's sensors in order to drive as well or better. The human eye does indeed have very impressive resolution and tracking, but the ability to attend to a certain area of interest also means that you miss things in other areas. Instead of using the human as the reference point, we can turn the question around and ask instead: given a video feed from a current generation Tesla, would a human be able to drive safely? I would suggest yes, though it would take some adjustment from existing driving habits. If a human could do it with Tesla's current sensors then an AI almost certainly can eventually do better with the same sensors. I actually think the bigger issue with Tesla's approach (and I say this as a generally happy Tesla owner... though the timing is terrible since it had to be towed to the service center today) is their insistence on minimal maps/local data for driving. I understand why they want to do that for scaling purposes, but there are lots of intersections that are confusing for your average human the first time they come to it. I expect figuring out the traffic pattern in a confusing intersection is the harder AI problem.