6 ms·

I'm having a very hard time believing that this is real. If it is, they have just made breakthroughs in multiple domains in computer graphics, recognition, and

by chime 17y ago

I'm having a very hard time believing that this is real. If it is, they have just made breakthroughs in multiple domains in computer graphics, recognition, and composition at the same time. Here's hoping it's real.

fname 17y ago
I agree... But they have the source available if you can get to the site. Otherwise, here's the Google cache link: http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:http://cg.cs.tsinghua.edu.cn:8080/cmm/%3Fp%3D42&hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hs=0nz&strip=1 http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:http://cg.cs.tsinghua.ed...
- patio11 17y ago
  The download doesn't include source. It does include 5 executables totaling ~140k. I am not quite brave enough to run them but I did run them through strings, and a cursory inspection suggests either that they're either attempting to do what they're claimed to do or they're the best disguised malware in history.
  - anigbrowl 17y ago
    Oh the software's legit - I ran them all and nothing bad happened :) It's just not very stable or easy to get going with, is all.
  - uiohnuipb 17y ago
    So gentlemen our plan is simple. We study computer graphics for 10years, get PhDs, develop a system that gets headlined at siggraph, become famous and - then we release a binary that the HN readers will download. World domination is in our sights <evil laugh>
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
shib71 17y ago
The technical terms and researcher's names pass the Google sanity check, e.g. http://cg.cs.tsinghua.edu.cn/prof_hu.htm http://cg.cs.tsinghua.edu.cn/prof_hu.htm, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kadir_Brady_saliency_detector http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kadir_Brady_saliency_detector.
NathanKP 17y ago
We've been seeing some pretty fascinating developments in graphics and pattern recognition recently. A few days ago someone submitted that amazing Photoshop plugin that allows you to select a region and move it around seamlessly, and also fill in areas seamlessly. The demo showed the software filling in the broken areas of the Pantheon and the results were quite impressive. A combination of both technologies would be simply incredible. Edit The official site of the plugin is definitely down. Its probably overloaded by all the people who are interested in checking it out. ;)
- anigbrowl 17y ago
  Just FYI, that stuff to which you refer is a teaser for CS5, the next iteration of Photoshop...due around April, most likely.
  - fortybillion 17y ago
    The SIGGRAPH presentation video for this is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgKjs8ZjQNg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgKjs8ZjQNg
jacobolus 17y ago
Most of the parts have been done (a couple things look new, but just read through the list of SIGGRAPH papers for the last few years; the field is sprinting forward, as computers become fast enough to do this sort of computation), but putting it all together is pretty damn impressive. Now, as hard as what's been done on the algorithms side, someone has to figure out a usable user interface for these tools, so that regular people can play with them.
NickM 17y ago
My guess is that it's real, but that it doesn't usually work as well as the example images provided. If it really works for any kind of input sketch, then how come there are so many images of dogs catching frisbees and bears catching fish?
- JacobAldridge 17y ago
  Yup. When I see a real-time demonstration showing a bear catching a frisbee (probably, but not definitely, while jumping out of a shark-threatened helicopter), then I'll believe it. Edit: I'll also believe it if anyone on this site claims to have seen same.
- lurkinggrue 17y ago
  The algorithm is optimized for dogs/Frisbees and bears/fish. Reminds me of a company I worked for they were working on a video compression and the video source the developers had was a security camera. The compression was optimized for bookshelves and hand waving.
albertsun 17y ago
The Gizmodo story says that they presented it at SIGGRAPH Asia 2009. According to http://www.siggraph.org/asia2009/ http://www.siggraph.org/asia2009/ that doesn't take place until December.
- Pistos2 17y ago
  Well, it is listed here: http://www.siggraph.org/asia2009/for_attendees/technical_papers/details/?type=techpapers&id=50 http://www.siggraph.org/asia2009/for_attendees/technical_pap... "Friday, 18 December | 9:00 AM - 10:45 AM | Room 301/302" Not sure what to think. Maybe they're writing in past tense in the same way sports sites write "such and such team played on Tuesday" even though it was Tuesday at the time of writing.
- apu 17y ago
  Papers for SIGGRAPH & SIGGRAPH Asia are accepted a few months before the conference. These are the best two conferences in computer graphics, and the bar to get in is extremely high -- reviewers are very very tough and submitted papers have to not only be technically accurate, but also very polished in writing and presentation (and video). That being said, a lot of these kind of systems have been coming out in the past few years, and it's a little hard to judge how successful they are due to the enormous amount of work required to reproduce results (their releasing a binary is commendable). My own personal feeling is that this system probably works quite well for "common" things in their database, but there might be many small artifacts in generated images. Also, if you start trying to include stuff that's not well represented in the database, then the artifacts probably become quite severe.
jerf 17y ago
Surprisingly, not really. Computer vision has been moving along lately. This is good stuff, but incremental progress against the backdrop of other good stuff in the field. A few times in the past few months the question of whether "all the good stuff" has been discovered or whether there's no progress left to be made came up, and computer vision has been one of my go-to examples of a field that has just been booming lately. Interestingly, digging in shows that it's still not "AI", just as you don't see any "AI" here, but there's still been a qualitative sea change in the past few years. I think the fact that a $1000 machine is now unbelievably powerful has been a real boon for the field.
- joeyo 17y ago
  I have seen this argument being made frequently here recently--that the "AI" that we have produced is not "real" AI. This is understandable true in a way, since after all, AIs cannot do many of the things that natural intelligences can do. And so there is this perceived disconnect between the weak AI that we have (rules, heuristics, belief networks, bayesian inference and friends) and the strong that we AI (magic?). But there is a similar disconnect that looms between the rudimentary intelligence of simple organisms and the more sophisticated intelligence higher mammals. Many researchers have noted this taken the insight that with a simple set of rules you can get complex behavior. This has lead to something of a revolution in ML, robotics and neuromorphic engineering. If this analogy holds, then it may be that the distance between weak and strong AI will be bridged in the same way that the distance between single celled organisms and primates appears to be bridged: by iteratively building complex systems on top of simpler building blocks. There simply won't be a secret sauce to be found, but each layer of complexity will allow for increasingly sophisticated behavior.
- fortybillion 17y ago
  When I took an AI class back in University, the professor noted that the term AI is usually only applied to the problems we can't solve. As soon as we determine an algorithm for something, they no longer call it AI. So technically, it was a Data Mining class I guess.
ja2ke 17y ago
Siggraph is home to some crazy presentations. I'm always surprised by the more impressive videos and papers, but on the other hand, never that surprised, just because it's always only one step crazier than the crazy thing from last year's.
jeremyawon 17y ago
the automated object recognition and extraction is what impresses me. everything else is a killer usage example of that core technology.
jcl 17y ago
This is one of those SIGGRAPH papers that are like magic tricks -- unbelievable until you find out how they're done and what their limitations are. There are existing projects that pair an image composition function with a tagged image database (like this one: http://graphics.cs.cmu.edu/projects/photoclipart/ http://graphics.cs.cmu.edu/projects/photoclipart/). This project sounds like it adds a fitness function so that it can find an output image that looks good.
joe_the_user 17y ago
"Real" is relative. It might be "real" for a set of a hundred images but it might seriously bog-down or spit-out garbage if you tried to implement it for ten thousand, never mind ten million. Image processing is full of things that sort-of work, that are impressive but not fully reliable.

by chime 17y ago

fname 17y ago

I agree... But they have the source available if you can get to the site. Otherwise, here's the Google cache link: http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:http://cg.cs.tsinghua.edu.cn:8080/cmm/%3Fp%3D42&hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hs=0nz&strip=1 http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:http://cg.cs.tsinghua.ed...

patio11 17y ago
The download doesn't include source. It does include 5 executables totaling ~140k. I am not quite brave enough to run them but I did run them through strings, and a cursory inspection suggests either that they're either attempting to do what they're claimed to do or they're the best disguised malware in history.
- anigbrowl 17y ago
  Oh the software's legit - I ran them all and nothing bad happened :) It's just not very stable or easy to get going with, is all.
- uiohnuipb 17y ago
  So gentlemen our plan is simple. We study computer graphics for 10years, get PhDs, develop a system that gets headlined at siggraph, become famous and - then we release a binary that the HN readers will download. World domination is in our sights <evil laugh>
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]

shib71 17y ago

The technical terms and researcher's names pass the Google sanity check, e.g. http://cg.cs.tsinghua.edu.cn/prof_hu.htm http://cg.cs.tsinghua.edu.cn/prof_hu.htm, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kadir_Brady_saliency_detector http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kadir_Brady_saliency_detector.

NathanKP 17y ago

We've been seeing some pretty fascinating developments in graphics and pattern recognition recently. A few days ago someone submitted that amazing Photoshop plugin that allows you to select a region and move it around seamlessly, and also fill in areas seamlessly. The demo showed the software filling in the broken areas of the Pantheon and the results were quite impressive. A combination of both technologies would be simply incredible. Edit The official site of the plugin is definitely down. Its probably overloaded by all the people who are interested in checking it out. ;)

anigbrowl 17y ago
Just FYI, that stuff to which you refer is a teaser for CS5, the next iteration of Photoshop...due around April, most likely.
- fortybillion 17y ago
  The SIGGRAPH presentation video for this is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgKjs8ZjQNg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgKjs8ZjQNg

jacobolus 17y ago

Most of the parts have been done (a couple things look new, but just read through the list of SIGGRAPH papers for the last few years; the field is sprinting forward, as computers become fast enough to do this sort of computation), but putting it all together is pretty damn impressive. Now, as hard as what's been done on the algorithms side, someone has to figure out a usable user interface for these tools, so that regular people can play with them.

NickM 17y ago

My guess is that it's real, but that it doesn't usually work as well as the example images provided. If it really works for any kind of input sketch, then how come there are so many images of dogs catching frisbees and bears catching fish?

JacobAldridge 17y ago
Yup. When I see a real-time demonstration showing a bear catching a frisbee (probably, but not definitely, while jumping out of a shark-threatened helicopter), then I'll believe it. Edit: I'll also believe it if anyone on this site claims to have seen same.
lurkinggrue 17y ago
The algorithm is optimized for dogs/Frisbees and bears/fish. Reminds me of a company I worked for they were working on a video compression and the video source the developers had was a security camera. The compression was optimized for bookshelves and hand waving.

albertsun 17y ago

The Gizmodo story says that they presented it at SIGGRAPH Asia 2009. According to http://www.siggraph.org/asia2009/ http://www.siggraph.org/asia2009/ that doesn't take place until December.

Pistos2 17y ago
Well, it is listed here: http://www.siggraph.org/asia2009/for_attendees/technical_papers/details/?type=techpapers&id=50 http://www.siggraph.org/asia2009/for_attendees/technical_pap... "Friday, 18 December | 9:00 AM - 10:45 AM | Room 301/302" Not sure what to think. Maybe they're writing in past tense in the same way sports sites write "such and such team played on Tuesday" even though it was Tuesday at the time of writing.
apu 17y ago
Papers for SIGGRAPH & SIGGRAPH Asia are accepted a few months before the conference. These are the best two conferences in computer graphics, and the bar to get in is extremely high -- reviewers are very very tough and submitted papers have to not only be technically accurate, but also very polished in writing and presentation (and video). That being said, a lot of these kind of systems have been coming out in the past few years, and it's a little hard to judge how successful they are due to the enormous amount of work required to reproduce results (their releasing a binary is commendable). My own personal feeling is that this system probably works quite well for "common" things in their database, but there might be many small artifacts in generated images. Also, if you start trying to include stuff that's not well represented in the database, then the artifacts probably become quite severe.

jerf 17y ago

Surprisingly, not really. Computer vision has been moving along lately. This is good stuff, but incremental progress against the backdrop of other good stuff in the field. A few times in the past few months the question of whether "all the good stuff" has been discovered or whether there's no progress left to be made came up, and computer vision has been one of my go-to examples of a field that has just been booming lately. Interestingly, digging in shows that it's still not "AI", just as you don't see any "AI" here, but there's still been a qualitative sea change in the past few years. I think the fact that a $1000 machine is now unbelievably powerful has been a real boon for the field.

joeyo 17y ago
I have seen this argument being made frequently here recently--that the "AI" that we have produced is not "real" AI. This is understandable true in a way, since after all, AIs cannot do many of the things that natural intelligences can do. And so there is this perceived disconnect between the weak AI that we have (rules, heuristics, belief networks, bayesian inference and friends) and the strong that we AI (magic?). But there is a similar disconnect that looms between the rudimentary intelligence of simple organisms and the more sophisticated intelligence higher mammals. Many researchers have noted this taken the insight that with a simple set of rules you can get complex behavior. This has lead to something of a revolution in ML, robotics and neuromorphic engineering. If this analogy holds, then it may be that the distance between weak and strong AI will be bridged in the same way that the distance between single celled organisms and primates appears to be bridged: by iteratively building complex systems on top of simpler building blocks. There simply won't be a secret sauce to be found, but each layer of complexity will allow for increasingly sophisticated behavior.
fortybillion 17y ago
When I took an AI class back in University, the professor noted that the term AI is usually only applied to the problems we can't solve. As soon as we determine an algorithm for something, they no longer call it AI. So technically, it was a Data Mining class I guess.

ja2ke 17y ago

Siggraph is home to some crazy presentations. I'm always surprised by the more impressive videos and papers, but on the other hand, never that surprised, just because it's always only one step crazier than the crazy thing from last year's.

jeremyawon 17y ago

the automated object recognition and extraction is what impresses me. everything else is a killer usage example of that core technology.

jcl 17y ago

This is one of those SIGGRAPH papers that are like magic tricks -- unbelievable until you find out how they're done and what their limitations are. There are existing projects that pair an image composition function with a tagged image database (like this one: http://graphics.cs.cmu.edu/projects/photoclipart/ http://graphics.cs.cmu.edu/projects/photoclipart/). This project sounds like it adds a fitness function so that it can find an output image that looks good.

joe_the_user 17y ago

"Real" is relative. It might be "real" for a set of a hundred images but it might seriously bog-down or spit-out garbage if you tried to implement it for ten thousand, never mind ten million. Image processing is full of things that sort-of work, that are impressive but not fully reliable.