Shaper of things to come

[John McNamaraParticipant @johnmcnamara74883]

AI

[John McNamaraParticipant @johnmcnamara74883]

I started out posting this here: http://www.model-engineer.co.uk/forums/postings.asp?th=129275&p=1
Did not want to be a hijkacker so moved it here.

Hmm…..

I wondered if Google could find the image?

So I tried using the "Search Google for image" tool found by right clicking an image.
No It did not find it, however lower down on the result page was "Visually similar images" 
In a couple of days it will also find the image on the forum once it is added to the Google database.

The results are amazing to me.

At the moment it is confusing sewing machines with Shaper's and a couple of other machines, and yes it did find one Shaper, a pretty poor image of one too how did it work that one out?, it did determine that the object was a machine and not a dark cat like a Russian Blue ours is steely grey blue.

AI is becoming all pervasive. Its about 100 years since the industrial revolution got into full swing with the production line, and mass production on a grand scale.

I see a problem, In the past Mass production meant jobs with full employment once the 29 crash was over. Oh and that took less time than the GFC, we are still not over that.

But AI is different, Its more about job destruction not just production workers they have already been assailed by CNC and automation, clerical work has already been decimated, middle management will fall to AI its next!
There are some things it does really well like medical diagnosis in the hands of a good doctor. or finding images!

Google announced that they had updated their search engine, allowing it to in a way program it self learning as it goes. **LINK** They call it Deep Learning.

What does this mean in a year or two? will the same test find mostly shapers with only a couple of sewing machines or maybe all shapers.

Oh and Google is only one of many companies. **LINK** IBM is working on the hardware to crunch the numbers computers with unimaginable processing power.

To set the record straight No I am not a Luddite, I embrace CNC because of what it can do. I am however in a quandary? How do we make this new world work?

Sorry for this digression, I did not want to loose the train of thought.

Regards
John

Edited By John McNamara on 08/08/2017 15:10:29

Edited By John McNamara on 08/08/2017 15:12:39

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

It's still only working in 2D, needs a roomful of computers and doesn't really "know" what it's looking at

The biggest weakness for a computer is the amount of data it can work on in an instant, which at the moment is usually 64 bits

It does a whole bunch of them dead quick, but your eyes look at, say 5MB when they look at something, plus X-megabytes for depth perception

It's a bit like looking out through a tiny toilet roll tube and only "seeing" one pixel at a time

A computer has a 64bit address, your brain has a 64000 bit address kinda thing

Even optical character recognition is still struggling, it's good, but only for the obvious stuff

That Arnie terminator robot is still a long long way away, a long way

Edited By Ady1 on 08/08/2017 15:50:05

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

If you lined up 1000 films you had watched, and looked at 10 still pictures from this pile of movies, a human would know far faster than a computer which films those still pictures came from

Computers are still too linear, the human brain has something which takes short cuts

Once they can mimic that brain function then computers will really take off

Edited By Ady1 on 08/08/2017 15:49:15

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

When searching for images you have to understand that it is using the text surrounding the image. Therefore it helps to think about what the person posting an image was thinking when they titled the picture. So as with ebay additional words like hand, power, metal, Boxford, Alba can set it on the right track.
I think it has for some time understood similar words, but the AI bit will progressively allow it to appreciate context, so perhaps marking lots of sites and blogs as being engineering related. The other part about learning is that it should already be noticing that the results you click on are the one related to engineering sites. So next time round it should put more of those sites at the top. Added to that it will start to take into account that your youtube viewing and ebay transactions label you as an engineer.

I have noticed how my ebay/google searches get reflected in the advertising at the start of youtube videos. Can anyone suggest searches that will get me more interesting adverts. I'm a bit fed up with the fallout from just a few minutes looking for a plumbing part.

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

Can anyone suggest searches that will get me more interesting adverts. I'm a bit fed up with the fallout from just a few minutes looking for a plumbing part.

Use the destroy all browsing history when closing down function

In my firefox it still retains logins and bookmarks

Edited By Ady1 on 08/08/2017 15:56:21

[Russell EberhardtParticipant @russelleberhardt48058]

Posted by Bazyle on 08/08/2017 15:52:11:I have noticed how my ebay/google searches get reflected in the advertising at the start of youtube videos. Can anyone suggest searches that will get me more interesting adverts. I'm a bit fed up with the fallout from just a few minutes looking for a plumbing part.

It won't get you more interesting adverts but you can get rid of a lot of the annoying ones by eliminating tracking cookies on those sites:

In Firefox go to Preferences > Privacy > History > Exceptions and add something like:

ebay.com Block

ebay.co.uk Block

google.co.uk Block

 

Russell

Edited By Russell Eberhardt on 08/08/2017 16:59:56

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

Intel has an interesting chip, an 80 core model

Using lots of cores at the same time on the same problem is called parallel processing and is an interesting solution towards what the brain does

It uses an awful lot of power and the software for it needs to be developed

Humans still do ok if they acquire proper skills

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

A VERY interesting recent development (sorry to keep yapping on about this stuff) has come about via the bitcoin and blockchain industry which does those internet ecoins

They can now produce relatively cheap and efficient hardware chips which can only do one complicated thing, but they can do it extremely efficiently

A normal computer chip can "do everything" via software, but it is actually pretty slow compared to hardware

So in the past, dedicated hardware like a 1980 video recorder could record movies but it took microchips and software 25 years to develop and catch up with that ability

Nowadays a single intel 3 Ghz core will use about 20watts to hash 3.4Kilohashes for the ferociously difficult Litecoin scrypt algorythm but hardware chips using 10watts can do 345 Khs (So 2 KW of work can be done with 10 watts)

I reckon it's only a matter of time now before someone comes up with "smart" hardware chips which can interface with a slower software based logic controller chip, sight, hearing etc will be via a dedicated hardware chip, with decisions being made via the logic chip

Then things will really take off

 

Edited By Ady1 on 09/08/2017 09:32:27

[John McNamaraParticipant @johnmcnamara74883]

Considering it was first postulated in 1965 by Gordon Moore

Moore's law has remained remarkably prescient.

**LINK**

If quantum computing is finally brought mainstream and out of the laboratory and IBM think they can, Computing power will go up several orders of magnitude.

Moore on steroids.

Amazing

[Jim CahillParticipant @jimcahill55556]

Moore's "Law" may have held because it is not in the Interests of the computer industry to run too fast.

When Mobile phones first came out, Motorola Gurus predicted phenomenal demand and built 3 factories in Scotland to meet the projected demand. The factories were expected to work 3 shifts. Only one factory was ever used and peaked at 2 shifts.

People accept change slowly and eventually grow tired of continual upgrading.

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

Posted by Jim Cahill on 09/08/2017 10:49:57:

People ……. grow tired of continual upgrading.

So Microsoft forces them to by making the older software vulnerable to viruses…………….

Optical processing may hold the key. For illustration there are lots of radio stations all on different frequencies and you can wind the handle on your radio to go through each in turn. If you modulate a laser with the full spectrum and pass the beam through a diffraction grating it can split all the frequencies out simultaneously. This was what was being worked on in the defence electronics industry when I left it 20 years ago. In an equivalent way optical masks can be used to pick out data patterns making millions of comparisons simultaneously.

[Mike PooleParticipant @mikepoole82104]

I find this video of an ABB Flexpicker robot and vision system very impressive, to process the image and send the offsets to the robot at that speed impresses me.

Mike

[richardandtracyParticipant @richardandtracy]

Posted by John McNamara on 08/08/2017 15:05:13:

How do we make this new world work?

A couple more questions that are also pretty pertinent: 'Do we want it to work?' and 'Is it to our advantage if it does?'

At the moment I am pretty open minded about the questions I've asked, but slightly tending to the 'No' side.

Regards,

Richard.

[MuzzerParticipant @muzzer]

Posted by Jim Cahill on 09/08/2017 10:49:57:

When Mobile phones first came out, Motorola Gurus predicted phenomenal demand and built 3 factories in Scotland to meet the projected demand. The factories were expected to work 3 shifts. Only one factory was ever used and peaked at 2 shifts.

Haha I wouldn't rely on anything Motorola ever said. That's the same company that also invested massively in 3G and nearly killed itself in the process and that was just the PCS telecoms group. I was working there at the time and the leadership team were a bunch of deluded corporate retards. It's no great coincidence that since then the company has slowly but inexorably disappeared up its own back passage, to the point that there is now pretty much nothing left.

During my time there, the CEO was Chris Galvin, grandson of one of the founders. He enjoyed a suspiciously meteoric rise to the top, fuelled by a rich diet of management bulls*it and sycophantic, self-interested thrusters. I almost used to enjoy the CEO's monthly corporate email, it being so far beyond parody. There is an expression here in Lancashire "clogs to clogs is three generations" ie the first generation founds a business, the second manage to keep it going and the third run it into the ground. Chris Galvin was your man, although it's clear from his Wikipedia page that he feels he actually did them proud….

Murray

[John McNamaraParticipant @johnmcnamara74883]

Hi Richard

There is an Article in the New York times yesterday based on Thomas Picketty's work, it deals with income growth across the population by percentile.
**LINK**

Worth reading, I think it describes quite well the results of technological change on the average citizen. I have a couple of his books.

Yes I agree with your bias towards the no side, the system does appear to be breaking particularly at the end of a long day. Some would say it is already broken? However tomorrow is new day and. It is never too late to refocus and repair, this we must do all the time, it is normal. At the risk of raising a pun on the title of this thread we must shape the future, Incremental change is the answer. Lets hope it is incremental and peaceful change.

Regards
John

Edited By John McNamara on 09/08/2017 16:04:52

[Anonymous]

Specialised hardware ICs have been around for decades. Any PC will have a dedicated graphics processor which processes vast amounts of data in parallel. Likewise many consumer product processors will have dedicated IP hardware blocks for things like graphics and audio. They can be run with DMA so little or no need for processor intervention.

The key problem with any type of hardware processor is getting the data in and out, not the processing per se. When parallel processing can use true parallel data paths as well as multiple processors then that will really put a tiger in the tank.

Andrew

[John McNamaraParticipant @johnmcnamara74883]

Hi All

A friend sent me a link to a TED talk this morning, given by a Graduate student Joseph Redman.

"How computers learn to recognize objects instantly."

it is a very short 7 minute demonstration of software he has developed to recognise objects, animals and people in real time. In the demonstration he is running it on his laptop and a mobile phone.

**LINK**

He states that the software is available in the public domain.

Very impressive, Filming the audience in real time, they are found and frame marked, as well as some signs. being held.

A great example of what can be done without a supercomputer.

Regards
John

PS If you have never browsed through the TED talk world, today is your lucky day, be amazed, so many people sharing knowledge.

[Another JohnSParticipant @anotherjohns]

Posted by Andrew Johnston on 09/08/2017 19:18:57:

Specialised hardware ICs have been around for decades. Any PC will have a dedicated graphics processor which processes vast amounts of data in parallel.

(is this Model Engineering? why not??)

I write code that runs mainly on graphics chips; the latest bit for a customer runs something around 250 million "threads" to complete one computation; takes a few seconds on my $100.00 (Canadian) GPU card. It creates a 1024×1024 "grid" as output in the end. The client loves it. (whew)

I'm currently porting it to my Android phone for a test – will be interesting to see how well it works.

Relevant? I think so – computers have invaded the workshop to an extent, and computer vision, or olde plain CNC, will be the way of the future, whether we like it or not.

In the home, we've already seen the rise and fall of Mach-3/4, maybe LinuxCNC will become embedded (as Tormach took it and package it as PathPilot) and there are a lot of other pre-packaged controllers out there. (just ask John Stevenson!)

Back to work… (sigh)

[larry PhelanParticipant @larryphelan54019]

I got lost as soon as I began reading this stuff,so I,m now going to bed to sleep on it. Might make more sense in the morning.

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