What’s the Next Big Thing going to be? Virtual Reality? The Internet of Things? Synthetic Biology? Genetic editing? What about Vision AI?
Daffodil Software explains what it is, “Vision AI (also known as Computer Vision) is a field of computer science that trains computers to replicate the human vision system. This enables digital devices (like face detectors, QR Code Scanners) to identify and process objects in images and videos, just like humans do.”
And if the field continues to progress it could become the next great digital frontier as information technology continues on its progression from the world wide web to mobile apps to whatever comes next.
As Venture Beat puts it:
“The web may not be the largest thing to run on the internet (these days it seems like Zoom is) but it was the most transformational until mobile apps came along. You can follow the waves by developer interest: in the 2000s everyone was learning HTML and making a website. In the 2010s everyone was learning to develop mobile apps. In the 2020s all the developers are going to build Vision AI. And for good reason.
Where the web had its impact was by digitizing manual paper-based processes. Rather than receive a bank statement in the mail you could view it on the web. Rather than mail in a check, you could pay on the web. Rather than fax in a trade authorization, you could validate it on the web.
This extended to internal enterprise processes, from product configuration to employee surveys, and to B2B processes, from catalog updates to credit reporting. All the information was now digital, thanks to the portal we call the web, and could be acted upon digitally. When mobile apps came along, the groundwork of digitized information was there to make that data available in the palm of our hands.
I believe the next big wave is Vision AI, and for the same reason: It offers the opportunity to digitize the next massive trove of information in the world, that which is not on paper but which can be seen through a camera. Cameras, you know, those miraculous things that, because they are in every smartphone, are now incredibly powerful and cheap.
Cameras and their related processing powers are eclipsing other types of sensors, driven by useful cell phone app experiences and digital culture ranging from Instagram to Pinterest to TikTok to facial recognition technology embedded into sporting events. The cameras and related processing power are becoming incredible and eclipsing other types of sensors. Why use a magnetic proximity sensor that must have something placed on a door when you can point a tiny inexpensive camera at the door and know if it’s open? Why use a temperature sensor when a camera can see reflected light frequencies and determine the temperature? The latest cellphones are integrating LIDAR sensors into their cameras, and I believe the camera sensing suite will become even more sophisticated. Combine this with emerging computer vision technology powered by AI, and together you have Vision AI.
Vision AI has the power to unlock the future of automation in a way not seen since the Web Revolution where every form and phone call was turned into a site, and we unlocked all the resulting searches, analytics, and automated processing that is now commonplace. Just like there are web boot camps, there will soon be computer vision boot camps to enlarge the circle of access to this new technology.
Anything you want to count, record, analyze, or store can be obtained by teaching Vision AI to look for it. And that’s just capturing the data, the way web forms did. After that unfolds everything we can do with that data. Provide reports, comparisons, and analysis. Make predictions. Profile and advertise. Learn and educate.”
Reading all that makes it clear, at least to me, that Vision AI is a strong candidate for title of Next Big Thing. The ubiquity of cell phones cameras combined with the rise of video sharing apps just makes it seem kind of obvious that we’re headed in a direction where imagery reigns supreme. The fact that we prefer to use emojis instead of written words nowadays is even further evidence of that. After all, a picture says a thousand words. And at the rate we’re going images will soon do all the talking for us.
Is Vision AI the Greatest Idea Ever?
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