If you could you only have two of the five senses, you’d likely choose vision and hearing. The other three senses – taste, smell, and touch – are luxury items. The same holds true for AI algorithms. They’re now able to not just understand speech, but also detect emotion in real time. Sophisticated call center algorithms now create customer profiles that are matched to an appropriate representative. Getting a bit testy because John in Mumbai is being too recipe driven? You might find yourself inexplicably disconnected from the call. AI algos ain’t got no time for agro.
While natural language processing is fairly advanced, mankind is still working through the kinks on how to help AI algorithms see the world around them. Processing images as humans do is called computer vision. That’s where you take a video capture and understand all the objects and the context of what’s happening. Another method for AI to see is called LiDAR – light detection and ranging.
Lidar Leaders
Anna-Sofia Lesiv of Contrary – a venture capital fund run by founders from Tesla, Airbnb, and Facebook – published an excellent piece on this topic which distinguished a key difference between lidar and computer vision. The former captures a 3D model of its environment from the get-go, while the latter captures a 2D image. “By shooting hundreds of thousands of little laser beams at a time, lidar can creat
