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<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>Good morning,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>I keep seeing things with {disarmed}. What is
this? Is it a list? If so, how does one aubscribe?
Thanks. </FONT></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=nfbk@nfbnet.org href="mailto:nfbk@nfbnet.org">Cathy Jackson via
Nfbk</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=nfbktad@nfbnet.org
href="mailto:nfbktad@nfbnet.org">NFB of Kentucky, Technology Assistance
Division</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Cc:</B> <A title=cathyj1949@gmail.com
href="mailto:cathyj1949@gmail.com">Cathy Jackson</A> ; <A
title=nfbk@nfbnet.org href="mailto:nfbk@nfbnet.org">NFBK</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Saturday, April 02, 2016 9:58
AM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: [Nfbk] [Nfbktad] {Disarmed}
Decades of computer vision research, one ‘Swiss Army knife’</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>Ann worked for our national office not NFB of Maryland.</DIV>
<DIV id=AppleMailSignature>Cathy<BR><BR>Sent from my iPhone</DIV>
<DIV><BR>On Apr 2, 2016, at 9:03 AM, Kevin Pearl via Nfbktad <<A
href="mailto:nfbktad@nfbnet.org">nfbktad@nfbnet.org</A>>
wrote:<BR><BR></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE type="cite">
<DIV>Anne Taylor is a senior project manager at Microsoft and a former NFBK
member. She also worked for the NFB in Baltimore.
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>
<H1 class=title
style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 1em; MAX-WIDTH: 100%; LINE-HEIGHT: 1.4em; -webkit-hyphens: manual"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 28px">Decades of computer vision research, one ‘Swiss Army
knife’ - Next at Microsoft</SPAN></H1>
<P style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%"><SPAN style=>When Anne Taylor walks into a room,
she wants to know the same things that any person would.</SPAN></P>
<P style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%"><SPAN style=>Where is there an empty seat? Who is
walking up to me, and is that person smiling or frowning? What does that
sign say?</SPAN></P>
<P style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%"><SPAN style=>For Taylor, who is blind, there
aren’t always easy ways to get this information. Perhaps another person can
direct her to her seat, describe her surroundings or make an
introduction.</SPAN></P>
<P style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%"><SPAN style=>There are apps and tools available
to help visually impaired people, she said, but they often only serve one
limited function and they aren’t always easy to use. It’s also possible to
ask other people for help, but most people prefer to navigate the world as
independently as possible.</SPAN></P>
<P style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%"><SPAN style=>That’s why, when Taylor arrived at
Microsoft about a year ago, she immediately got interested in working with a
group of researchers and engineers on a project that she affectionately
calls a potential “Swiss Army knife” of tools for visually impaired
people.</SPAN></P>
<P style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%"><SPAN style=>“I said, ‘Let’s do something that
really matters to the blind community,’” said Taylor, a senior project
manager who works on ways to make Microsoft products more accessible. “Let’s
find a solution for a scenario that really matters.”</SPAN></P>
<P style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%"><SPAN style=>That project is <A
style="TEXT-DECORATION: none; MAX-WIDTH: 100%"
href="https://youtu.be/3WP7Id8SxYQ">Seeing AI</A>, a research project that
uses computer vision and natural language processing to describe a person’s
surroundings, read text, answer questions and even identify emotions on
people’s faces. Seeing AI, which can be used as a cell phone app or via
smart glasses from <A style="TEXT-DECORATION: none; MAX-WIDTH: 100%"
href="http://www.pivothead.com/">Pivothead</A>, made its public debut at the
company’s <A style="TEXT-DECORATION: none; MAX-WIDTH: 100%"
href="http://build.microsoft.com/">Build conference</A> this week. It
does not currently have a release date.</SPAN></P>
<P style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%"><SPAN style=>Taylor said Seeing AI provides
another layer of information for people who also are using mobility aids
such as white canes and guide dogs.</SPAN></P>
<P style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%"><SPAN style=>“This app will help level the
playing field,” Taylor said.</SPAN></P>
<P style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%"><SPAN style=>At the same conference, Microsoft
also unveiled <A style="TEXT-DECORATION: none; MAX-WIDTH: 100%"
href="https://www.captionbot.ai/">CaptionBot,</A> a demonstration site
that can take any image and provide a detailed description of it.</SPAN></P>
<P style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%"><SPAN
style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%"><MAILSCANNERIFRAME9488 style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%"
type="text/html" allowfullscreen="true" frameborder="0"
src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/R2mC-NUAmMk?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent"
height="392" width="643" iframe=""></MAILSCANNERIFRAME9488></SPAN></P>
<P style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%"><SPAN style=><STRONG style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%">Very
deep neural networks, natural language processing and more<BR
style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%"></STRONG>Seeing AI and CaptionBot represent the
latest advances in this type of technology, but they are built on decades of
cutting-edge research in fields including computer vision, image
recognition, natural language processing and machine learning.</SPAN></P>
<P style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%"><SPAN style=>In recent years, a spate of
breakthroughs has allowed computer vision researchers to do things they
might not have thought possible even a few years before.</SPAN></P>
<P style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%"><SPAN style=>“Some people would describe it as a
miracle,” said <A style="TEXT-DECORATION: none; MAX-WIDTH: 100%"
href="http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/people/xiaohe/">Xiaodong He</A>, a
senior Microsoft researcher who is leading the image captioning effort that
is part of <A style="TEXT-DECORATION: none; MAX-WIDTH: 100%"
href="https://www.microsoft.com/cognitive-services">Microsoft Cognitive
Services</A>. “The intelligence we can say we have developed today is so
much better than six years ago.”</SPAN></P>
<P style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%"><SPAN style=>The field is moving so fast that
it’s <A style="TEXT-DECORATION: none; MAX-WIDTH: 100%"
href="http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/264408/ImageCaptionInWild.pdf">substantially
better </A>than even six months ago, he said. For example, <A
style="TEXT-DECORATION: none; MAX-WIDTH: 100%"
href="http://research.microsoft.com/people/ktran/">Kenneth Tran</A>, a
senior research engineer on his team who is leading the development effort,
recently figured out a way to make the image captioning system more than 20
times faster, allowing people who use tools like Seeing AI to get the
information they need much more quickly.</SPAN></P>
<P style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%"><SPAN style=>A major a-ha moment came a few years
ago, when researchers hit on the idea of using deep neural networks, which
roughly mimic the biological processes of the human brain, for machine
learning.</SPAN></P>
<P style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%"><SPAN style=>Machine learning is the general term
for a process in which systems get better at doing something as they are
given more training data about that task. For example, if a computer
scientist wants to build an app that helps bicyclists recognize when cars
are coming up behind them, it would feed the computer tons of pictures of
cars, so the app learned to recognize the difference between a car and, say,
a sign or a tree.</SPAN></P>
<P style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%"><SPAN style=>Computer scientists had used neural
networks before, but not in this way, and the new approach resulted in big
leaps in computer vision accuracy.</SPAN></P>
<P style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%"><SPAN style=>Several months ago, Microsoft
researchers <A style="TEXT-DECORATION: none; MAX-WIDTH: 100%"
href="http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/people/jiansun/">Jian
Sun</A> and <A style="TEXT-DECORATION: none; MAX-WIDTH: 100%"
href="http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/kahe/">Kaiming
He</A>made another big leap when they unveiled a new system that uses very
deep neural networks – called <A
style="TEXT-DECORATION: none; MAX-WIDTH: 100%"
href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1512.03385">residual neural networks</A> –
to correctly identify photos. The <A
style="TEXT-DECORATION: none; MAX-WIDTH: 100%"
href="http://blogs.microsoft.com/next/2015/12/10/microsoft-researchers-win-imagenet-computer-vision-challenge/">new
approach</A> to recognizing images resulted in huge improvements in
accuracy. The researchers shocked the academic community and won two major
contests, the <A style="TEXT-DECORATION: none; MAX-WIDTH: 100%"
href="http://www.image-net.org/">ImageNet</A> and <A
style="TEXT-DECORATION: none; MAX-WIDTH: 100%"
href="http://mscoco.org/home/">Microsoft Common Objects in
Context</A>challenges.</SPAN></P>
<P style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%"><SPAN style=><STRONG
style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%">Tools to recognize and accurately describe images<BR
style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%"></STRONG>That approach is now being used by
Microsoft researchers who are working on ways to not just recognize images
but also write captions about them. This research, which combines image
recognition with natural language processing, can help people who are
visually impaired get an accurate description of an image. It also has
applications for people who need information about an image but can’t look
at it, such as when they are driving.</SPAN></P>
<P style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%"><SPAN style=>The image captioning work also has
received <A style="TEXT-DECORATION: none; MAX-WIDTH: 100%"
href="https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/inside_microsoft_research/2015/06/11/microsoft-researchers-tie-for-best-image-captioning-technology/">accolades
for its accuracy</A> as compared to other research projects, and it is
the basis for the capabilities in Seeing AI and Caption Bot. Now, the
researchers are working on expanding the training set so it can give users a
deeper sense of the world around them.</SPAN></P>
<DIV class=clear style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%; CLEAR: both"><A
style="TEXT-DECORATION: none; MAX-WIDTH: 100%"
href="https://mscorpmedia.azureedge.net/mscorpmedia/2016/03/FSPB4720.jpg"><FONT
color=#000000><IMG class=extendsBeyondTextColumn
style="MAX-WIDTH: none; HEIGHT: auto; WIDTH: 375px; MARGIN: 0.5em auto 0.5em -20px; DISPLAY: block"
alt="Margaret Mitchell"
src="https://mscorpmedia.azureedge.net/mscorpmedia/2016/03/FSPB4720-1024x634.jpg"
width=643 height=398 scale="0"></FONT></A>
<P style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%; FONT-STYLE: italic"><SPAN style=>Margaret
Mitchell</SPAN></P></DIV>
<P style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%"><FONT color=#000000><SPAN style=><A
style="TEXT-DECORATION: none; MAX-WIDTH: 100%"
href="http://m-mitchell.com/">Margaret Mitchell</A>, a Microsoft researcher
who specializes in natural language processing and has been one of the
industry’s leading researchers on image captioning, said she and her
colleagues also are looking at ways a computer can describe an image in a
more human way.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%"><SPAN style=>For example, while a computer might
accurately describe a scene as “a group of people that are sitting next to
each other,” a person may say that it’s “a group of people having a good
time.” The challenge is to help the technology understand what a person
would think was <A style="TEXT-DECORATION: none; MAX-WIDTH: 100%"
href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1512.06974">most important, and worth saying</A>,
about the picture.</SPAN></P>
<P style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%"><SPAN style=>“There’s a separation between what’s
in an image and what we say about the image,” said Mitchell, who also is one
of the leads on the Seeing AI project.</SPAN></P>
<P style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%"><SPAN style=>Other Microsoft researchers are
developing ways that the latest image recognition tools can provide more
thorough explanations of pictures. For example, instead of just describing
an image as “a man and a woman sitting next to each other,” it would be more
helpful for the technology to say, “Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are
posing for a picture.”</SPAN></P>
<P style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%"><SPAN style=>That’s where <A
style="TEXT-DECORATION: none; MAX-WIDTH: 100%"
href="http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/people/leizhang/">Lei
Zhang</A> comes in.</SPAN></P>
<P style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%"><SPAN style=>When you search the Internet for an
image today, chances are high that the search engine is relying on text
associated with that image to return a picture of Kim Kardashian or Taylor
Swift.</SPAN></P>
<P style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%"><SPAN style=>Zhang, a senior researcher at
Microsoft, is working with researchers including Yandong Guo on a system
that uses machine learning to identify celebrities, politicians and public
figures based on the elements of the image rather than the text associated
with it.</SPAN></P>
<P style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%"><SPAN style=>Zhang’s research will be included in
the latest vision tools that are part of <A
style="TEXT-DECORATION: none; MAX-WIDTH: 100%"
href="https://www.microsoft.com/cognitive-services">Microsoft Cognitive
Services</A>. That’s a set of tools that is based on Microsoft’s
cutting-edge machine learning research, and which developers can use to
build apps and services that do things like recognize faces, identify
emotions and distinguish various voices. Those tools also have provided the
technical basis for Microsoft showcase apps and demonstration websites such
as <A style="TEXT-DECORATION: none; MAX-WIDTH: 100%"
href="http://how-old.net/">how-old.net</A>, which guesses a person’s age,
and <A style="TEXT-DECORATION: none; MAX-WIDTH: 100%"
href="http://news.microsoft.com/features/fetch-new-microsoft-garage-app-uses-artificial-intelligence-to-name-that-breed/">Fetch</A>,
which can identify a dog’s breed.</SPAN></P>
<P style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%"><SPAN style=>Microsoft Cognitive Services is an
example of what is becoming a more common phenomenon – the lightning-fast
transfer of the latest research advances into products that people can
actually use. The engineers who work on Microsoft Cognitive Services say
their job is a bit like solving a puzzle, and the pieces are the latest
research.</SPAN></P>
<P style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%"><SPAN style=>“All these pieces come together and
we need to figure out, how do we present those to an end user?” said Chris
Buehler, a software engineering manager who works on Microsoft Cognitive
Services.</SPAN></P>
<P style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%"><SPAN style=><STRONG style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%">From
research project to helpful product</STRONG><BR
style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%">Seeing AI, the research project that could
eventually help visually impaired people, is another example of how fast
research can become a really helpful tool. It was conceived at last
year’s <A style="TEXT-DECORATION: none; MAX-WIDTH: 100%"
href="http://blogs.microsoft.com/firehose/2015/07/27/oneweek-hackathon-2015-heard-around-the-world/">//oneweek
Hackathon</A>, an event in which Microsoft employees from across the company
work together to try to make a crazy idea become a reality.</SPAN></P>
<P style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%"><SPAN style=>The group that built Seeing AI
included researchers and engineers from all over the world who were
attracted to the project because of the technological challenges and, in
many cases, also because they had a personal reason for wanting to help
visually impaired people operate more independently.</SPAN></P>
<P style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%"><SPAN style=>“We basically had this super team of
different people from different backgrounds, working to come up with what
was needed,” said Anirudh Koul, who has been a lead on the Seeing AI project
since its inception and became interested in it because his grandfather is
losing his ability to see.</SPAN></P>
<P style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%"><SPAN style=>For Taylor, who joined Microsoft to
represent the needs of blind people, it was a great experience that also
resulted in a potential product that could make a real difference in
people’s lives.</SPAN></P>
<P style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%"><SPAN style=>“We were able to come up with this
one Swiss Army knife that is so valuable,” she said. </SPAN></P>
<P style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%">This article is online at: </P>
<P style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%"><A
href="http://blogs.microsoft.com/next/2016/03/30/decades-of-computer-vision-research-one-swiss-army-knife/#sm.00002h8xm51d70fekv7feuqdwllvq">http://blogs.microsoft.com/next/2016/03/30/decades-of-computer-vision-research-one-swiss-army-knife/#sm.00002h8xm51d70fekv7feuqdwllvq</A></P>
<P style="MAX-WIDTH: 100%"><BR></P></DIV></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE type="cite">
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