4 ms·

So, at the risk of doing the SV "how can we ML this" thing, this seems like a pretty good opportunity to apply computer vision. I'm sure OpenAI or Deepmind or w

So, at the risk of doing the SV "how can we ML this" thing, this seems like a pretty good opportunity to apply computer vision. I'm sure OpenAI or Deepmind or whoever could build a lot of good will by training such a model and freely distributing it. I'm sure it will be tricky due to lack of training data, though. You could maybe even do this without an end-to-end ML system, and just use ML to do the head+arms detection, and then do a rules-based approach to determine the drowning status. This is probably much more tractable and doesn't have the lack of training data.

gentleman11 5y ago
Strongly agreed in theory, but… That goodwill ends when the company is found to be uploading all footage to the cloud to evaluate everyone’s physical fitness and body shape for future insurance company use, and to build a picture of your social web for Facebook one day, and heck, whatever else people will pay to know, including to serve warrants against other people incorrectly identified by other ml systems as commuting some crime I’ll become 100x more pro-machine vision once severe laws get made to restrict how it’s used.
bigmattystyles 5y ago
Yes we can - and what people miss, you don't have to be ML only or Human only - it can be Human lifeguard augmented by ML, especially at places like beaches where the horizon to scan is much larger. I suppose the danger is of the human becoming complacent. As far as training data, if we know what it looks like, we can create virtual scenes that simulate different conditions and scenarios and train on that. Obviously, it won't be perfect but if it gets deployed, we can start getting more real life data and augment the training on that. Not for lifeguards, but I've always imagined a future vision system that would track me in my lap swim workout. At the end, it would tell me my stats, length swam, times, stroke done (with count) and maybe even down the line coaching my form.
- ineedasername 5y ago
  you don't have to be ML only - it can be Human lifeguard augmented by ML Yep, when it comes to such things my background leans towards NLP. Not sure what the OCR state of the art is these days, but it used to be side-by-side human-assisted computer: The computer did the bulk of the work. For language translation (at least in lower stakes applications) it was the reverse: A human assisted by a computer. Even within computer-only NLP methods, they often benefited from a mixed-model approach using both rule-based & stochastic methods together.
MattGaiser 5y ago
There is apparently a company doing this already: https://swimeye.com/ https://swimeye.com/
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ineedasername 5y ago
  My concern is that it could give lifeguards a false sense of security, make them complacent unless they get an alarm. A fair amount of research has been done on that sort of thing, for example commercial airlines when autopilots started to become more sophisticated: It took a while and a lot of training of pilots to avoid a false sense of security.
- alach11 5y ago
  It's kind of disappointing that this looks for people drowning at the bottom of the pool. That's a much later intervention than spotting the problem while they're still struggling at the surface. Maybe that problem space was much harder to solve?

gentleman11 5y ago

Strongly agreed in theory, but… That goodwill ends when the company is found to be uploading all footage to the cloud to evaluate everyone’s physical fitness and body shape for future insurance company use, and to build a picture of your social web for Facebook one day, and heck, whatever else people will pay to know, including to serve warrants against other people incorrectly identified by other ml systems as commuting some crime I’ll become 100x more pro-machine vision once severe laws get made to restrict how it’s used.

bigmattystyles 5y ago

Yes we can - and what people miss, you don't have to be ML only or Human only - it can be Human lifeguard augmented by ML, especially at places like beaches where the horizon to scan is much larger. I suppose the danger is of the human becoming complacent. As far as training data, if we know what it looks like, we can create virtual scenes that simulate different conditions and scenarios and train on that. Obviously, it won't be perfect but if it gets deployed, we can start getting more real life data and augment the training on that. Not for lifeguards, but I've always imagined a future vision system that would track me in my lap swim workout. At the end, it would tell me my stats, length swam, times, stroke done (with count) and maybe even down the line coaching my form.

ineedasername 5y ago
you don't have to be ML only - it can be Human lifeguard augmented by ML Yep, when it comes to such things my background leans towards NLP. Not sure what the OCR state of the art is these days, but it used to be side-by-side human-assisted computer: The computer did the bulk of the work. For language translation (at least in lower stakes applications) it was the reverse: A human assisted by a computer. Even within computer-only NLP methods, they often benefited from a mixed-model approach using both rule-based & stochastic methods together.

MattGaiser 5y ago

There is apparently a company doing this already: https://swimeye.com/ https://swimeye.com/

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ineedasername 5y ago
My concern is that it could give lifeguards a false sense of security, make them complacent unless they get an alarm. A fair amount of research has been done on that sort of thing, for example commercial airlines when autopilots started to become more sophisticated: It took a while and a lot of training of pilots to avoid a false sense of security.
alach11 5y ago
It's kind of disappointing that this looks for people drowning at the bottom of the pool. That's a much later intervention than spotting the problem while they're still struggling at the surface. Maybe that problem space was much harder to solve?