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AI Input Devices News

Kinect-Based AI System Watches What You're Up To 87

Posted by timothy from the 8-bit-necktie-on-the-door dept.
mikejuk writes "Researchers from Cornell have used AI to create a system based on the Kinect that can recognize what you are doing — cleaning your teeth, cooking, writing on a whiteboard etc. In a smart home it could be used to offer help: 'Would you like some help with that recipe, Dave?' Or it could monitor patients or workers to make sure they are doing what they are told. The study also reveals that there is probably enough information in how activities are performed to recognize an individual — so providing yet more biometrics. There are clearly a lot more things that we can teach the Kinect to do with machine learning than just gesture recognition."
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Kinect-Based AI System Watches What You're Up To More

Kinect-Based AI System Watches What You're Up To

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  • There are some things AI is good at without being annoying, such as suggesting URL's as you type them, or suggesting the temperature so you don't burn your food. Good AI tries to prevent human error by suggesting alternatives.

    This AI however sounds like shitty intrusive stuff that no one in their right mind would want. We don't need AI to tell us recipes, or to watch us 24/7. If you want that kind of AI, I'm sure you'll make the government proud because I cannot imagine anyone else wanting that even in the

    • There's a reason we imagine fictional robots as humanoid - we can relate to them if we think of them as people, but if they are just toasters then we are less forgiving.

      Just as you wouldn't want a person constantly pestering you asking if you want help writing your letter, you get annoyed with a paper clip doing the same.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kodomo ( 1100141 )
      I can see some uses for the monitoring. Watching Infants or elderly, recognize someone in trouble (choking, having a seizure), monitoring jails.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by srussia ( 884021 )

      There are some things AI is good at without being annoying, such as suggesting URL's as you type them [snopes.com], or suggesting the temperature so you don't burn your food [ecorazzi.com]. Good AI tries to prevent human error by suggesting alternatives [procon.org].

      So you voted for Gore, get over it already.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by artor3 ( 1344997 )

      AI might have prevented the Bradley Manning leak so put it on the people with security clearances, but leave the rest of us alone. We don't want or need this.

      A broken camera with an LED to make it look like it's on could have accomplished the same thing, and would be much cheaper than creating an AI that can tell the difference between someone using a computer legally and someone using a computer illegally. I really can't see any legitimate use for an AI watchman looking over a person's shoulder all the time. Maybe a sufficiently advanced one could sit on a student's desk, watch them work, and correct them if they are making repeated errors of spelling, gramma

    • Annoying? Possibly. POS? No way. Here are some killer applications for Big Brother:

      - Your employer, who wants to watch you every moment to make sure you aren't goofing off or stealing from the company.

      - Your grandchildren, who want to make sure that granddad hasn't fallen and can't get up. Ideally, they'd love to know if you've had a stroke and are fumbling around, or you're waving frantically for help.

      - You, because in your dotage, you'd like to live alone, but need someone/something to check up on yo

    • You just wait until someone creates a paperclip avatar for it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Xest ( 935314 )

      Meh, classic Slashdot over reaction stemming from a complete lack of imagination.

      I can think of a number of situations in which this would be useful- training being one of them. What better than to use this as an interactive teacher for teaching sign language for example? or even better- allowing people who can't speak to communicate with otherwise voice based systems using sign language.

      What about doing things like teaching people to juggle? It could tell them what they're doing wrong, or how to improve.

      Yo

  • Are you still there? (Score:3)

    by decipher_saint ( 72686 ) on Monday July 04, 2011 @11:20AM (#36653262)

    I seeEE you!

  • "Perhaps you would like this website instead, Dave?"

  • So they brought back Clippy into meatspace? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 04, 2011 @11:21AM (#36653274)

    "It looks like you're writing a letter. Would you like help with that?"

  • Clippy in your real life, now that must be fun!

    I see you're trying to clean your teeth. Would you like some help with that?

    *insert less innocent variants here*

  • How is this going to help improve my sexual performance?

    • Dave brings home a date. She goes to the bathroom to freshen up.

      HAL 69: Dave, your date looks hot; would you like some Viagra/Levitra/Cialis?

    • How is this going to help improve my sexual performance?

      By monitoring you, and sounding an air-horn just before the critical moment ... thereby distracting you enough that your, um, release is no longer quite so pressing and making you look like a stud.

      Of course, your mother might wonder why there's always a horn blaring in the basement when you're down there alone for more than 20 minutes. If you ever brought a real girl, she might be a little startled by the noise.

    • How is this going to help improve my sexual performance?

      A voice in the bedroom saying
      "You need to rotate your hips more at the end of each thrust, Dave..."
      of course, for anyone setting up such a system it will more likely be
      "Try switching hands, and using oil instead of lotion, Dave"

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by durrr ( 1316311 )
      It will discretly inform you when she's faking it.
      It will also watch you masturbate.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by celle ( 906675 )

        "It will discretly inform you when she's faking it.
        It will also watch you masturbate."

        Well if she's faking it aren't you essentially masturbating anyway?

    • Re:Real question is (Score:4, Funny)

      by gregor-e ( 136142 ) on Monday July 04, 2011 @01:49PM (#36654626) Homepage
      A voice will gently intone "I see you're masturbating, Dave. I happen to know of 20238 men and 3 women who are also masturbating right now. Would you like me to open video chat with any of them?"

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Could be the end of paid porn as we know it. Someone is bound to come out with a list of folks who "do the deed" quite often.

  • Cue Clippy jokes in 3... 2... 1...

  • Dave, should i open the Kama sutra? (Score:5, Funny)

    by drolli ( 522659 ) on Monday July 04, 2011 @11:25AM (#36653348) Journal

    It seems to me you and your girlfriend need advice.

    • In a smart home it could be used to offer help: 'Would you like some help with that recipe, Dave?'

      Or... In a smart home it could be used to offer help: 'Would you like some help with that vi@Gra, Dave?'

    • Fifteen or twenty years ago, I saw a "student" film about a guy at an ATM, and "HAL" starts talking...

      ATM: "Hello Dave, I see you're withdrawing 25 dollars."
      DAVE: "Yeah, I'm going on a date tonight."
      ATM: "Now Dave, you know you haven't had a date in 3 months."
      DAVE: "No, really! Honest!"

      I wish I could remember the rest of it. Good stuff. ;-)

    • Also, Dave, your "girlfriend" has external genitalia under those panties. Do you wish me to change the orientation criteria for your porn downloads, or have you made a mistake?
    • Meanwhile, in the neighbouring house...

      "Would you like to rest your hand, Dave?"

  • How long will it take before Kinect-style 3D-ranging becomes "standard" for all or most cameras? With 3D display tech getting closer to usability and affordability in recent years, clearly some companies are seeing a market opportunity. And with all the interesting Kinect hacks that have come out lately, it's not hard to imagine this sort of thing cropping up all over the place in the near future.

    How long will it take before depth sensing tech becomes a standard feature on your average smart phone? (If ever

  • Everyone is getting in on the kinetic game these days. There was a cool demo of using kinetic to control your agile wallboard at the Atlassian Summit last month, with special guest star of Darth Vader... There is a neat open source project around using the kinetic and you dont need an xbox to play... you can control it via Ubuntu and Mac OSX. https://labs.atlassian.com/wiki/display/KINECT/Interactive+Wallboards+-+Quickstart+Guide [atlassian.com] Thank you.
  • If you're doing what I think you are, may I suggest turning off the webcam?

  • Could low-cost computers that read your physical behavior launch an entire new industry of “real world” personal apps?

    Could it tell if you are brushing your teeth properly?

    Could it remind you to hang up your clothes, instead of leaving them on the floor?

    Could it determine that your love-making skills are not up to par, and offer specific suggestions for better technique or timing?

    Oh! The mind boggles at how much people would pay for those apps.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Nethead ( 1563 )

      Could low-cost computers that read your physical behavior launch an entire new industry of âoereal worldâ personal apps?
      Could it tell if you are brushing your teeth properly?
      Could it remind you to hang up your clothes, instead of leaving them on the floor?
      Could it determine that your love-making skills are not up to par, and offer specific suggestions for better technique or timing?
      Oh! The mind boggles at how much people would pay for those apps.

      I already have a wife.

      If I bought more than one such

  • Meh (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Warlord88 ( 1065794 ) on Monday July 04, 2011 @12:10PM (#36653768)
    My Machine Learning professor at University of Texas was hugely into Reinforcement Learning. He and one of his graduate student had developed this kind of system many years ago. Basically, only using a simple video camera, the computer could identify correctly all sub-activities involved in making a peanut butter sandwich; such as 'open jar', 'jelly on bread', 'jar closed', etc. We were shown the video during first class of the course and it was pretty cool.

    The MSR guys are doing interesting stuff but this is nothing groundbreaking.
    • Can you say who it was? Also what is ground breaking about this is that the depth data made the task of learning so much easier. They had a range of activities and the training data was fairly limited for the task and yet it seems to work. It seems to be a general rule that depth data makes a lot of vision tasks much easier.
      • It was Dana Ballard. IIRC, the work that I referred to was done when he was at Rochester. He seems to have a link to the peanut butter and jelly video [utexas.edu] up on his page, but I am not able to download it.

        I couldn't gather much from TFA apart from that they recognized the activities and the learning model behind it. I don't recall how much training data Dr. Ballard used, but the activity recognition in real time was very accurate.

  • Has anyone seen if the time and motion studies people have looked into this. I feel like there could be a market for bringing in a Kinect system and having it watch workers performing manufacturing tasks. It would allow you to collect and analyze the motion data without needed human analysts, high-speed film, or motion-capture suits. It could also be useful for in-situ motion studies, where you take the entire shop ecosystem into account.

  • Your boss' job got automated! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    More and more jobs get automated this days. This time it was your boss' job.

  • How's it going?
  • Then we don't need hundreds of passwords any more.... That would be a good thing!!!
  • ..for privacy erosion? Hell maybe we just _want_ it that way.
  • I can imagine how this can go so horribly wrong: Clippy, EVERYWHERE.

  • Just what do you think you're doing, Dave?

    I guess with HAL's / IBM's jeopardy monster Whatson, plus Kinetics, plus Big Dog from Boston Dynamics, plus some live amo.
    You would have a nasty walking drone.
    I bet it wont take long before something like that will enter the battlefield.

  • Microsoft Bob for the house. I can't wait.

    But seriously, couldn't this be used for other purposes, like reaping marketing info from what you do during the day? Or doing "minority report"-style "crime prevention"? Anything that makes us safer...

    • If you're on Facebook, you've already given up a nearly equivalent amount of privacy. This would just be the next logical step. Keep in mind that, just like Facebook, someone would have to go through all of those massive amounts of data to do something useful with it. Your database is only as useful as your data mining algorithms.
  • I see you are whacking it. Would you like me to download more bit torrent porn?

  • Dave...where are you putting that thing?

  • If the internet has taught us anything it is that porn is what will decide if a technology is successful.

    So when this thing can figure out someone is masturbating and automatically play porn, let me know. Till then it is just a toy.

  • I said so when the Kinect came out. It's an rather inexpensive thing to toy around with and such things suddently get possible with small means.

    I'm wondering when Google will start to sell similar devices. Any AI and data mining software could really take off when it can know what you're doing, who's there and even what's being said. Sooner or later it should be possible to build a house (or a workplace) that is actually aware of you and what you're doing. In the long term we won't be using computers and ne

  • "I'm sorry Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that." "I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it."
  • wounder what the point in making that type of system would be for them? seems like there is some real use for something like this but just why would they make it when so little use.
  • Move the 9, move the 9, undo so that you can move the 9. You will fail if you don't move the 9!

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