Tag Images With Your Mind 64
Posted
by
samzenpus
from the typing-is-hard dept.
from the typing-is-hard dept.
blee37 writes "Researchers at Microsoft have invented a system for tagging images by reading brain scans from an electroencephalograph (EEG). Tagging images is an important task because many images on the web are unlabeled and have no semantic information. This new method allows an appropriate tag to be generated by an AI algorithm interpreting the EEG scan of a person's brain while they view an image. The person need only view the image for as little as 500 ms. Other current methods for generating tags include flat out paying people to do it manually, putting the task on Amazon Mechanical Turk, or using Google Image Labeler."
I was tagging that image, honest! (Score:2, Interesting)
Fun and Easy to Use (Score:4, Interesting)
This is typical of MS -thinking that something like this would be easy for the average user. FTA: "However, the mind reading approach has the advantage that it does not require any work at all from the user."
So, in order to use this sytem, we should all strap on EEG caps while we're surfing the web. Sounds real practical to me - I used to work in an EEG lab, and I can tell you that those caps are pretty uncomfortable to wear. After they put them on, you stick these little needles into the leads and squirt conductive goop on your scalp. It takes a few cycles to rinse that stuff out too.
Way to go MS for making productivity so much easier.
Re:Oh Microsoft... (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, the variance isn't the problem. That comes out statistically in the wash - you can see that with a large enough N, patterns emerge across the different stimuli types, which allows them to do the tagging. The real problem is interpreting the complex interactions between the different regions of the brain. However, that doesn't really matter for an experiment like this, as the patterns don't actually need to be interpreted, just recognized by the algorithm. It's a similar concept to the way the MMPI psychological test was developed, in some ways.
It's funny, the MS team doesn't seem to even recognize this. FTA: "and scientists’ currently weak ability to interpret what brain scans mean.
3-class (Score:3, Interesting)
Focus (Score:2, Interesting)
What happens when I'm tagging a photo but listening to music at the same time?
Or I run the photo tagging software in a small window and watch a movie (or some porn) instead?
So they can create tags from brain waves, but there's no way to tell what a user is actually focussing on.